


Trouble

by shieldivarius



Series: Trouble. Capital "T" [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:17:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 33,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/shieldivarius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melinda knew Natasha Romanoff was trouble the moment she first laid eyes on her. </p><p>She just thought she'd be trouble for S.H.I.E.L.D. </p><p>Not for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a glacially slow get-together fic with plenty of spy shenanigans on the journey. 
> 
> If you'd rather listen than read, please check out knight_tracer's amazing podfic, linked in the related works!

i.

S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t exactly have an environment that lent itself to gossip. Interesting, dangerous things certainly happened all of the time but very few had access to the entirety of that data, and that may have pissed some people off (people being mostly civilians, or those in other agencies who knew S.H.I.E.L.D. existed but had no clearance), but it was certainly for the better more than for the worse.

So it wasn’t that there was nothing at all to gossip about, it was just that it mostly, _mostly_ , didn’t happen. Oh, sure, people talked about others' private lives all the time, or at least what they knew about them, but as far as the internal workings of the agency went, no one was talking about which consultants were getting raises, or whose clearances levels were changing, or what was going on in the Cairo office. It wasn’t that no one knew about these things, or that no one was curious about them, just that no one dared overstep their rank or clearance level and try to learn more than they were meant to know.

The system worked, and everyone who it worked for, and who worked within it, respected it.

The system worked, but that also meant the system sometimes got in the way of private life issues.

So when Coulson got back from being out of reach for two months, snappish and a little jittery, Melinda had no way of finding out exactly what had happened to make him that way. And while she had absolute trust in the system, and acknowledged that whatever had happened didn’t concern her in the least, she still harboured a burning curiosity about what could have shaken Phil so badly.

She didn’t approach him about it. She went about her own business, because really they were only colleagues, or work friends who sometimes grabbed a drink when they weren’t on the clock _at best_. 

She didn’t bring it up when they stopped by the pub a week after he returned.

She didn’t mention it two weeks later when they were in the same spot and she was nursing a shoulder healing from having been dislocated while breaking up an arms deal.

She didn’t even mention it when, the week after that, she stopped by his office to drag him out for beer (because he’d been locked in his office for a solid week and she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him), and he was arguing with Clint Barton in low tones. Their voices didn’t carry into the hall, and she’d had no reason to think Phil was anything but alone in the office, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel the slightest hint of embarrassment when she opened the door and discovered he was in the middle of something.

She probably should’ve knocked. She gave them a cool glance instead and stepped back into the hall, waiting patiently until Barton stormed out of the office and out of her sight, not even giving her a backward glance.

“What’s going on, Phil?” she asked when they’d claimed their usual out-of-the-way booth in the back of the pub. The bench was set up in an ‘L,’ giving them both perfect view of the lines to doors and windows as long as they sat perpendicular rather than across the table from one another.

“Classified,” he grunted. Then he moaned and put his head in his hands. “But since it’ll get around, I’m being court-marshalled.”

Melinda raised an eyebrow, and didn’t press it until they’d each gotten through half a pint. 

“What, exactly, did you do?”

Coulson shook his head. “That’s the classified part. It’s beyond your clearance. Hell, with all they’re telling me, it might be beyond _my_ clearance.”

“How’s Barton involved?”

Phil pressed his lips together, looking like he wanted to talk—like he wanted to talk really, really badly—and Melinda gave him a tight smile.

“Forget it,” she said. “You need a character witness? When’s the hearing?”

“Next month. The subpoena hasn’t technically been issued yet, they think it might not even happen, but that just means I have to wait.” He put his head in his hands and groaned. 

“What’s it for, Phil?”

He mumbled something into his hands, unintelligible with the music and noise in the pub, and the blockage. 

“Phil,” she prompted.

“Insubordination,” he said, barely raising his head enough to get his lips clear of his hands before burying his face again.

She pushed his beer across the table toward him until it nudged his hand, and he gripped it, gave her a thankful look, and downed half of what was left. He wore a miserable expression, and if this had been hanging over his head for a couple of months—at least one that she knew of, but she suspected more—then it was no wonder.

“The worst part,” he said, “Is going to be convincing them that I regret what I did.”

“Time to stop talking, Phil,” Melinda said. “I’ll be your character witness, but if you’re being court-marshalled the last thing you need is to be breaching clearance levels, too.”

He waved a hand, but nodded all the same. “I know. Thanks,” he said, and now his voice mirrored the misery on his face. 

“It might not happen?”

“It’s going to happen.”

 

Coulson had a month, anyway, if anything was going to happen, and that meant that nothing came up on the topic again, because she’d seen how close he’d come to telling her things he couldn’t, and he’d tangled himself up in his own head too much to think of trying to talk about it on his own, anyway. 

A week and a half after he’d told her about the insubordination charge, Melinda was on a helicopter out to the Raft, a file in her head about the prisoner she’d be escorting to the Hub. 

_Potential Asset_ , rather, the file had said, but anyone who S.H.I.E.L.D. arrested and locked up in a high-security prison couldn’t possibly be that useful to them. All she had on the prisoner was an inmate number and list of things to be warned about: expert escape artist, master at espionage and infiltration, assassin, genetically enhanced. Melinda didn’t have a problem seeing the use this person had to S.H.I.E.L.D.

She could also foresee him being more trouble than he was worth.

At the Raft she left her gun at the door, and accompanied the warden—who grunted at the inmate number she showed him—to a cell on one of the upper levels. 

As soon as Melinda laid eyes on the prisoner, she wished there had been more information in the file she’d been given on the little redheaded woman sitting and reading a book within. 

She was young, couldn’t have been any older than 25, with curls cascading out of her ponytail and down her back. The cell she was being held in was comfortable, with any number of things in sight Melinda knew could be used as tools for escape. For an expert escape artist, she seemed complacent, even happy to be where she was.

The warden entered the cell and cuffed the redhead’s hands behind her back anyway, leading her out roughly. If it bothered the woman, she didn’t let any discomfort show on her face. If nothing, she seemed amused by it all, and that only made Melinda more certain that she saw S.H.I.E.L.D. and the world existing at her sufferance. Trouble. Melinda didn’t need any more exposure to her to know she was more trouble than asset.

Too bad that wasn’t her call.

“I’ll sign Romanova over to you if that’s what the paperwork says, but you sure you can handle her?” the warden asked at the exit of the high security hallway. The look he gave her said he’d taken one look at her size and decided that wasn’t the case. Since Romanova was, if anything, smaller, that was interesting. 

“I’m sure,” Melinda replied. Romanova’s expression remained impassive; bored, like S.H.I.E.L.D. and this prison didn’t have her fate in its hands and she still had her freedom.

Trouble.

The warden raised a shoulder as though to say ‘if you’re sure’ and ‘I doubt it’ but there was nothing he could do to counteract the paperwork she’d presented, and he led them out into the office area of the prison, Melinda at the rear with Romanova sandwiched between them. Melinda watched her, looking for any tells or twitches that might suggest she was about to try something, but the woman remained calm. 

She probably didn’t know she was in a prison on an island in the middle of the Hudson River, but if she’d been Russian intelligence, it was more than likely she’d made an educated guess to that effect.

They’d returned to the chopper, Romanova’s arms bound elbow to wrist behind her back and Melinda holding onto her upper arm, when she planted her feet and refused to move forward. Melinda pushed her, but Romanova refused to move, looking into the helicopter like it held a cobra.

“What?” Melinda snapped. 

“I was promised all escort duties would be given to Agent Barton,” she said, without even a trace of the heavy Russian accent Melinda had been expecting. None of that careful control had left her face, and if she was afraid the emotion wasn’t present in her voice, either, but her stance had changed. “He isn’t here.”

“Well observed,” Melinda said, dryly. “Get in the helicopter.”

“Where are you taking me?” Romanova asked, instead of moving. And now, _now_ , she didn’t look like she had all of the power in her hands. Now she looked like she might try and make a run for it, even if the landing pad was three stories up and there were at least 20 gunmen in sight and she had no hope of getting away.

Melinda didn’t respond, only nudged her forward, prompting a long, steadying intake of breath from the woman. She complied, not even dragging her feet.

Melinda secured her in the caged in seat in the chopper before strapping herself back into the co-pilot’s seat. A tiny monitor on the panel in front of her provided a feed of the camera monitoring Romanova, and the picture wasn’t the greatest, but it didn’t need to be with the stationary position the woman had adopted. Nose practically in the air, she looked proud despite her incarceration.

Her eyes also didn’t sparkle with as much life as Melinda had seen from her in the cell in the Raft, and she reconsidered the woman’s demand to see Barton as the helicopter rose into the air. When they were level and she looked back at the monitor to check on their prisoner, she had to look quickly away. Romanova had found the camera, giving her a too-close, too-direct view of resigned, deadened eyes that unnerved her more than they should have.

 

Like with the Raft, the Hub’s landing pad was on the roof, but even being outside and out of the way for most people who had business here, it bustled like an anthill. 

Romanova looked around as they disembarked from the chopper, only looking a tad bit interested in what was going on around her, and Melinda wished she knew what was going on in the woman’s head because she didn’t look even a little bit curious about where she was. For an enemy spy, that seemed awfully unusual. The amount of information she could return home with from here should’ve had her memorizing everything she saw.

“May. Everything went smoothly?”

Coulson hadn’t been the one to issue her orders regarding moving Romanova, but given that the woman had mentioned Barton, it didn’t surprise Melinda to find him waiting for them on the landing pad.

“No complications,” she said, and if Coulson wanted to hear about it, she could tell him in private about Romanova’s reservations with getting into the helicopter when Barton wasn’t present. As little weight as the words had carried then, they carried less now with his continued absence.

Coulson nodded, and they both signed the inmate transfer form that passed Romanova from Melinda and over to him. Melinda couldn’t control the obvious widening of her eyes in shock when Phil’s next move was to entirely undo the restraints binding her arms together.

“Coulson?” she asked, a bit of a snap to her voice. Romanova massaged her arms and rotated her wrists, ignoring them (at least for all intents and purposes) in favour of her own concerns. 

Her own concerns, which apparently didn’t involve Melinda or Coulson. She hadn’t reacted to Coulson’s presence much, either, at least not negatively. Almost as though she knew who Coulson was, or at least recognized his face.

And Melinda could’ve hit herself for not seeing it before this, when Romanova had asked after Barton. 

“We’re going to talk,” Melinda said, meeting Phil’s eyes. His lips twitched upward a little in a smile and he nodded his head to one side before tapping Romanova on the shoulder.

“Follow me, Natasha.”

Melinda watched them go, flicking her gaze up and down Romanova’s figure, memorizing the way the woman walked, the way she carried her body, because regardless of Coulson treating her as the asset S.H.I.E.L.D. had apparently decided she was, Melinda still couldn’t see anything but trouble.

 

ii.

Natasha’s experience with S.H.I.E.L.D. thus far had been a lot more relaxed, and gone a lot more smoothly, than she’d expected. Even with her shallow knowledge of the operation of the organization, it made sense to her. The operations were regimented, the way she’d been moved from person to person so orderly as to be clinical. Even being remanded into custody and detained for two months had been comfortable. She’d been able to get her mind in order, and the jail hadn’t been infiltrated by her former employers aiming to remove any threat she posed to them.

Even if the paperwork hadn’t yet been processed and S.H.I.E.L.D. still considered her probationary, Natasha was without country and couldn’t return home now. Not that she expected S.H.I.E.L.D. would allow her to leave scot-free if giving her a chance didn’t go well for them. She’d be put down like a dog, and possibly not even with as much mercy as an arrow through her eye would’ve been.

An arrow. She’d been bested by Robin Hood. _How ridiculous._

Waiting now, on the little, hard couch in Agent Coulson’s office, alone, gave her some comfort. He’d been a familiar face after her escort from the prison hadn’t been, at least, even if he still wasn’t Agent Barton. He trusted her enough to have left her alone for the couple minutes he planned on being away from the office, and that was something, when she considered how great a risk to career and organization it was for him to have brought her back with them, to America, instead of leaving her to bleed out in the tiny little alleyway behind the abandoned hospital in Minsk where they’d caught up to her.

Agent Barton, Coulson had said, had a great instinct for people. Natasha wasn’t sure of the truth in that statement, but she was willing to give him a chance in return for his giving her the same.

Barton. A charming, disarming man whose eyes, staring into her from the end of the arrow held at her throat, had shown her her death, held it out to her, then pulled it away and hid it again.

Natasha carried no doubt that he would show it to her again if she double-crossed S.H.I.E.L.D.—or made a mistake that made them think she had. He wouldn’t get the better of her twice; not now that she’d gotten a grasp on the extensiveness of his support structure, now that she’d been surprised by him once. But neither did Natasha have any desire to end the life of the man who had looked at her and, in an instant, decided she deserved a second chance, orders be damned.

There was no fathomable length she could go to repay the debt that had kept her warm and fed even when she likely still topped S.H.I.E.L.D.’s hit list; the debt that had brought her to this office, free of chains—at least of the physical variety—and left alone to do as she would.

But Natasha could try, and one thing she would _certainly_ be careful to do was make sure that Barton stayed alive long enough for her to see out this debt. That, at least, was something she knew she could do. Protecting someone else would be different than making sure she herself got safely out of every situation; it would mean particular, purposeful recalibrating of the way she operated.

Working with a partner would require that recalibration anyway, and Natasha knew it was going to take some time for her to adjust, to fully line her instincts up to recognize that if he was in trouble, she had to get him out—not only herself.

The door opened, and Natasha rose, at attention, when Coulson stepped into the room. He smiled at her. “So, Miss Romanova, we’ve almost got everything arranged to start your probationary period.”

“Romanoff, please,” she said, and when she filled out the form he handed her, she was careful to scratch out the ‘V-A’ at the end of the typed ‘FAMILY NAME’ line and scrawl in an ‘F-F’ in its place.

The first step to changing how she operated was changing who she operated as, and names were powerful things.


	2. Chapter 2

iii.

The sheer level of activity in the Hub meant that she didn’t see Romanova again before she left a week later and returned to the New York field office where she was usually stationed. She didn’t see Coulson for another two weeks, either. But as soon as he stepped out of the elevator onto her floor, Melinda looked up, spotted him, and closed down everything she’d been working on. 

Friday afternoon, and they were sitting in the bar before 1700.

“You _recruited_ a _Russian intelligence operative_ and wonder why you’re being court-marshalled for _insubordination?_ ” she hissed.

He pressed his lips together in a thin line and gave her a mild look that might as well have been a glare. Then, “It was Barton. I supported him, but it was Barton.”

“I’d worked that one out for myself,” Melinda bit out. “Catch her handing classified information back to Russia, yet?”

He shook his head. “I’m not worried about her,” he said. She’d been expecting him to shut down the conversation because she was fairly certain Romanova’s ‘recruitment’ (if that was even the classification they were using here) was need-to-know. “Barton’s showing her the ropes. It was a bit rocky there for a couple of days because we sent you to get her from the Raft instead of him, but he was in the same spot as I was, and that forbade him access to the Raft. She understood.”

“You see nothing wrong with letting her know that much detail, this early, about how we operate,” Melinda said.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he asked, and gave her an actual smile. “It’s looking like the subpoena’s not going to come and they’ve dropped the charge. Reward for good judgement, even if the orders were disregarded. And honestly, technically, the threat the target posed was still neutralized, if not the target herself.” He shrugged.

That was definitely information she wasn’t supposed to know, and so Melinda didn’t demand to know how or why Barton had gotten close enough to offer Romanova asylum instead of removing her from afar. But she suspected there was more than one reason she’d been sent to move the redhead from the Raft to the Hub, and put more weight on Barton’s judgement being questionable than his preclusion from the premises by the Court-marshal.

“Eat your burger,” she said, reaching across and taking one of the fries from his plate. Then, “She _is_ Russian Intelligence, then?”

“Was. She’s S.H.I.E.L.D., now.”

Right, of course.

In her head, Melinda started counting down the days until S.H.I.E.L.D. had a security breach because of their newest ‘asset.’

 

“So tell me,” Barton said, because for some reason someone had decided they needed to be on the same job and had assigned him to cover her, even though Melinda rarely worked with the man and everyone knew they didn’t work well together. Oh, they were professionals, but their personalities didn’t jive. She thought he was still on babysitting duty. Apparently not. “What’d I do this time?”

“N.R.,” Melinda replied, biting off the letters. 

A brilliant grin spread across Barton’s face. “Met her, huh?”

“ _You are insane_ ,” Melinda hissed, leaning across the space between them, glad that there was no one around to be overhearing this, because they weren’t even supposed to be having this conversation. As far as she knew, Romanova still didn’t have a clearance level. She wasn’t even Level 1, and that meant she wasn’t an asset—she was still a problem at best, a prisoner at worst, and even if she hadn’t caused any problems yet, it was only a matter of time.

“I’m not,” Barton said, sobering. “Nat needed a second chance. We’re giving her one.” 

‘Nat.’ She didn’t know Barton well. They were colleagues, they had different skill sets, they rarely worked together and when they did, they didn’t really get along (evidence, the current mission). She didn’t know him well, certainly not well enough to really be passing judgement, but she knew the type. He’d seen the scarlet shine in Romanova’s long curls, been taken in by the tiny, perfect figure, big green eyes and pouty lips, and decided S.H.I.E.L.D. could use her, because he wanted to bang her. 

Second chance, sure.

“Of course,” she said easily. 

“Hey,” Barton said, tone turning aggressive in a flash. “Sit down and talk to her, May. You think I’m an idiot; she’s just playing me, whatever. Don’t care. Don’t slander her at the same time.”

“I haven’t seen her since delivering her to the Hub,” Melinda said, thinking, as she said it, of the hollow, defeated eyes she’d observed in the monitor. If Barton had brought her in, and she’d been promised he’d be stuck to her side while she learned what S.H.I.E.L.D. was about, Melinda approaching her may very well have scared her.

“I can set up a meeting,” he said. “Long as you can stand the company of an idiot.” Melinda raised her eyebrows and he shrugged. “Just calling it like I see it,” he said. Then, “There’s the target. I have a roof to get to,” as he took off.

 

Melinda had been with S.H.I.E.L.D. for long enough that trying to protect the organization from _any_ threat was instinct by now. Rational thinking dictated that the system didn’t need her protection. It would recover from anything that hit it and it would move forward, because there were protocols in place to ensure that the required people would surge forward, like platelets to an open wound, and staunch any outpouring of information.

Still, part of the reason that S.H.I.E.L.D. was as effective as it was, was _because_ of the loyalty it inspired, even in spite of its required levels of secrecy. 

Melinda recognized that her reaction toward Romanova ran along a line between being cautious and being irrational. Coulson and Barton had seen something in her that made them change mission plans on a dime, and it seemed that both had avoided being punished in anyway for the insubordination. Someone else saw something in Romanova—the Director?—that was keeping her around and protecting the people involved. 

And Melinda needed to place some trust in the system, because maybe Romanova was collecting information to pass back to her employers, or maybe she really had defected and decided to dedicate herself to S.H.I.E.L.D.

The woman still screamed trouble to her. She agreed to Barton’s pitch of a meeting with her anyway, because even if it didn’t change her opinion of her, she’d be able to get a good read on her nevertheless.

 

Barton and Romanova picked a bar Melinda was unfamiliar with, one across town from the one where she usually met Phil to commiserate over drinks, and that was perfectly fine with Melinda, though it took her a bit aback when she walked in the door to the bar and realized it was a cop bar.

Barton stood at the bar when she walked in, leaning against it and chatting with the bartender, an older man who she assumed was an ex-cop, and probably the owner who’d opened the place as a retirement project. Romanova’s hair, bright even in the dim bar lighting, made her easy enough to spot with one quick glance around the bar. 

Melinda approached Barton and the bar instead of going to sit down at the table, not because she didn’t think Romanova knew she was there—she doubted a woman with her file let anything pass by her—but because it had been Barton’s invitation and she supposed she should let him do introductions. 

Barton nodded at her approach. “May, this is Dale. Dale, May.”

“Melinda,” she said, extending her hand to shake his when he offered it. 

“Wish I’d worked where you do, Clint. Lovely ladies for colleagues would’ve mixed it up a bit.

“Can I get you something, Melinda?” Dale asked over Barton’s snort.

She ordered and he poured her beer from the tap, handing it to her with a bit of a flourish. The corner of her mouth twitched up in a smile. “I’ll start a tab,” she said, taking the beer and crossing with Barton to the table where Romanova sat, reading a page that she folded up and slipped away at their approach.

A shadow of an expression of surprise flickered across her face when she saw Melinda.

“I know you’ve met informally,” Barton said. “But ‘Tash, this is Melinda May. May, Natasha Romanoff.”

She’d Anglicized her name. Interesting. 

Barton dropped onto the bench next to Romanoff at the booth, leaving Melinda to take a seat on the side that gave her less of a view of the door. It wasn’t the best spot in the room; that seemed to have been claimed by Romanoff, who no doubt had a paranoid streak longer than Melinda’s. She could have the seat.

“I told Barton this wasn’t necessary, but he insisted,” Romanoff said into the uncomfortable silence that followed the introduction. 

“We’re colleagues, we can go out for drinks,” Barton said. Romanoff rolled her eyes. 

“In the interest of full disclosure,” she said, pitching her voice low and leaning across the table so that Melinda would be able to hear her. “Until the paperwork for my Visa has been processed and I’m cleared for the field, he’s required to follow me around and otherwise keep me from causing trouble.”

Melinda took a sip of her beer and ‘ _hmm_ ed.’ “He seems to be doing an alright job so far.” Then, because she couldn’t figure out what Barton had expected from this evening other than awkward silences, asked, “How are you adjusting?”

Romanoff nodded, a gesture that revealed nothing at all. “I’m learning,” she said. “Adjusting,” she added, and after a moment Melinda realized Romanoff was studying her face like she’d expected something from this interaction that Melinda hadn’t delivered.

“Coulson’s interested in seeing if you two click,” Barton offered. “He probably wants you to work together once Nat’s cleared.”

Romanoff shot him a look, and at first Melinda thought it might be for the information dump. Then she noticed the grin on Barton’s face. The nicknames. They weren’t appreciated but Romanoff either didn’t dare tell him to stop, or she’d already given up on trying to get him to drop them. 

“He hasn’t mentioned anything to me,” Melinda said, not doubting the words, just trying to keep the conversation going so it at least lasted until she finished her beer. The bar had a comfortable enough environment, but the company could be better. For a sniper, Barton fidgeted more than she’d expected.

Barton shrugged. “Why would he? Who knows when it’s going to happen, right? Just thought, you two are about the same size, probably make good sparring partners. I’ve been assigned as Nat’s S.O. but changing things up would be better. Especially when I’m off on jobs and stuff.”

Romanoff wore a mild, almost blank expression, mask crafted to reveal nothing, and half-hidden by the rim of her glass, as she took shallow sips of her beer. From her actions and expression, she was convincing Melinda she didn’t care about the outcome of this conversation at all. And maybe she didn’t. Barton didn’t seem as though he’d thought through what he wanted out of this meeting beyond making sure Melinda and Romanoff had been introduced outside of a prisoner-captor situation.

And now that that had been done, she could see him scrounging for ways to make this an effective use of their time.

She applauded his attempt, even if it was crashing and burning as it fell down around his ears.

“You’re alright with that?” she asked, directing the conversation to Romanoff, who looked a little surprised she was being addressed.

The woman raised a shoulder, and Melinda didn’t know her at all and couldn’t claim to have anything like an accurate read on her, but she suspected that shrug was more one to shake off her own desires than one of indifference. 

“Barton’s job is to guide you in the right direction,” Melinda said, aware she’d stepped into volunteering advice where it wasn’t warranted and probably wasn’t desired, continuing on anyway because Barton shot her a look that pleaded for her to. “But be careful not to do something _just_ because he’s said you should.”

Melinda hadn’t thought Romanoff’s features could close off much more, but they did, even as she looked thoughtful for a moment. “Thank you,” she said.

Melinda nodded. Then, “I’m usually stationed here in New York, if you want to talk,” came spilling out of her mouth and Melinda blamed the beer.

Romanoff offered her a little smile, not much more than the corners of her lips upturning a fraction, but the expression lightened the heaviness in her eyes, just a tad, telegraphing the genuine emotion behind the mask. Sitting this close to her and talking instead of manhandling her, Melinda wondered if her pinning Romanoff’s age at 25 had been overshooting it a bit. She looked younger.

“Thanks, May,” Barton said.

She nodded and toasted the two of them with what was left in her glass before draining it and leaving, only stopping by the bar briefly to settle up her tab with Dale before she went. This way, at least, she might get a sense of any problems Romanoff was going to cause before they became anything catastrophic. Not that she had any hope of convincing herself that that’d been what she’d been thinking in the moment when she offered to let Romanoff come and talk to her.

Melinda shook her head, quick and sharp, on the bar stoop. 

At least the chances of Romanoff taking her up on the offer were low.

 

iv.

“That went well. For her,” Barton said when May had left and Natasha and he were alone. 

“What are you trying to do?” Natasha asked, more than a little sceptical. She ran her finger around the rim of her beer glass. She didn’t think May _disliked_ her, per se, but she certainly fell into the bulk percentage of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who knew about her and didn’t trust her intentions. 

Trust had to be earned, and worked best in an environment where it could be reciprocated. She didn’t have any particular concerns over being distrusted by anyone who had an idea of where she came from—she didn’t understand what each Level meant in S.H.I.E.L.D. well enough, yet, to put any sort of trust in those around her, either.

He shrugged. “I don’t want you to feel alone,” he said. “Maybe you’ll find someone you’re more comfortable around than me. You’re going to have to work with other people. S.H.I.E.L.D. sends out the best men for the team. Helps if they know each other and have worked together before, but that’s not always the case, either.”

“Sometimes I think you’re very professional,” she mused. “And other times you seem to throw everything away and launch yourself into the middle of chaos. Without a plan. I don’t understand how you’re still alive.”

“Non-standard education,” he said, and nudged her knee with his. “I’m a survivor.” 

Dale came over and dropped a basket of French fries into the middle of the table. “On the house,” he said. “As thanks for bringing people into this old hole in the wall.”

Barton waved at him. “I’ll take another pint, too,” he said, pushing his empty beer glass away from him. He grabbed Natasha’s and downed the rest of it, pulling a face because the beer was warm. “So’ll she.”

Barton poured ketchup on half of the fry basket and Natasha shook her head at the fond feelings this strange, abrupt, and very American man inspired in her.


	3. Chapter 3

v.

“Romanoff told me Barton had forced you to meet, outside of work,” Phil said the next time she saw him. Melinda raised her eyebrows and stared him down until he looked uncomfortable. 

“I gather it didn’t go well,” he added. “Barton thought it had.” 

“He got what he wanted,” Melinda said. And _she_ had given into a pair of big green eyes and a pretty face that feigned harmlessness while screaming danger. 

“He’s looking out for her. I’m impressed, actually.” Coulson gestured for them to continue walking down the corridor where they’d stopped when she’d all but stormed up to him. “He’s never been in the role of Supervising Officer before. He’s doing well, treating her like a little sister. They even bicker like siblings.”

“Siblings,” Melinda repeated, tone dripping with doubt.

“That’s the word I used,” Coulson said cheerfully. “Something you’re seeing that I’m not?”

“Oh, not at all,” Melinda said with a roll of her eyes. Phil wore a knowing smile. “Should you really be encouraging a _sibling_ -like relationship?”

Phil sobered. “Romanoff doesn’t have roots. He’s giving her some.”

“You’re concerned about her loyalty.”

“I’m concerned about her capacity to be loyal more than whom she’s loyal to,” he corrected. Melinda watched him from the corner of her eye. She’d thought Phil was out-of-touch with Romanoff, seeing her as something he wanted her to be—maybe as what he thought she had the potential to be—but maybe he _was_ seeing her for who she was. He’d spent more time around her, certainly, and would be receiving reports back from Barton, who’d somehow developed a good rapport with her in a short amount of time.

Maybe her impulsive offer to lend her ear to Romanoff hadn’t been as poor a decision as she’d immediately thought.

“She have a clearance level yet?” Melinda asked.

“The Director’s meeting with her this week.”

 

S.H.I.E.L.D.’s precautions and the care it took concerning gossip went out the window when Agents Barton and Romanoff started performing on missions together. Their reputation spread like wildfire, and they were being cited as the best strike team in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s history, regardless of very few every having worked directly with them, and with even fewer who knew how they operated. 

Barton had had a reputation before—one for being snarky and difficult to work with. That didn’t go away, not even a little, and it meant Romanoff was gaining a reputation as the only person who could work on a team with Barton in addition to being the fabled agent who had come from no where and shot to the top of the gossip ladder.

Not many had the clearance to know where she’d come from, and it didn’t seem many cared much, either. The name _Black Widow_ had been whispered through the halls, as though the little redhead was the legendary assassin, retired from freelancing and working for S.H.I.E.L.D.

People’s lofty, fantastical belief in and desire to spread sensational rumours didn’t affect Melinda so long as she didn’t get caught up in it. That was the mantra she’d taken on, because if Natasha Romanoff really was the Black Widow, they’d invited so much more than trouble into their walls. And then they’d given it a clearance level. Coulson and Barton were idealistic people at heart, but even they couldn’t be _that_ idealistic.

Then again, it had been six months since Melinda had escorted Romanoff from the Raft to the Hub, and the only thing she’d heard about her was how much her performance was exceeding everyone’s expectations. 

That only confirmed to Melinda that they hadn’t known what they were getting into in recruiting her, but Phil had long since tired of the nasty looks she shot him when Romanoff came up in conversation, and even she’d had to admit, a couple of months in without there having been an incident, that she was being paranoid and crotchety.

So she’d let go of thoughts of Romanoff, because she hardly had any interaction with the woman beyond occasionally passing her in the hall anyway. She’d never been put on assignment with her, Romanoff hadn’t ended up being an occasional sparring partner, and she’d never taken Melinda up on her offer of someone to talk to. 

Melinda suspected that the bond Romanoff and Barton had formed was enough for a woman who, as Coulson had said, had had no roots to speak of before coming to S.H.I.E.L.D. She suspected, given the reputation of how well they worked together, that they’d formed a bond no one else was liable to be able to breach. 

That bond didn’t mean Romanoff was loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D. It meant she’d be loyal to Barton over everything else, and as long as Barton stayed within the system and loyal to the organization, Romanoff wouldn’t stray.

Melinda tapped her fingers on her desk. It was more than they had from some of the field agents she’d worked with in the past. It was certainly more than they had from a lot of their consultants.

And… speak of the _devil_. Natasha Romanoff approached her cubicle. She looked better than she had the last time Melinda had been able to get a good look at her. Happier, certainly, and more confident in her skin and her environment. The badge pinned to the lapel of her leather jacket read ‘Level 2 – Field Agent’ and Melinda couldn’t control the momentary, surprised darting upward of her eyebrows. 

“Agent May,” she greeted, stopping at the entrance to her cubicle, and carefully keeping herself in the neutral territory of the hallway just beyond it. “Do you have a moment?”

“Depends how you’re defining ‘moment,’” Melinda said. “I’m working on a field report.”

Romanoff nodded, that long red hair flipping in an arc with the jerkiness of the motion. “It won’t take long.”

Melinda rose from her desk, locking the computer down and allowing the other agent to lead her out past the debriefing rooms and to the lounge set up at the far end of the hall from where her desk was. 

“What’s this about?” she asked. Romanoff canvassed the room as they entered, though it was empty.

“When I first started working here, at the New York office, you offered to lend your ear if I needed anything,” she said. Melinda made a noise of assent.

“You seem to have settled in fine.”

“I’ve heard a few things about your reputation,” Romanoff continued, talking over her. The young, almost frightened and out-of-her-depth woman that Melinda had spoken to months ago had vanished without a trace into the woman that stood in front of her. Interesting. She didn’t need to think back to that list of skills that had been on the prisoner transfer form she’d seen back when she’d first met Romanoff. The woman had played her then, and was playing her now, and Melinda didn’t even think it was entirely intentional.

“Things that have made you take me up on my offer, six months later. You’re not having trouble fitting in, at this point.”

Consternation flashed in Romanoff’s eyes, and Melinda saw the exact moment she regretted having tracked Melinda down to try and talk to her. That wouldn’t do. She hadn’t put a time limit on when Romanoff could come to her, after all, and she was _awfully_ curious to know what the redhead thought she was better off bringing to Melinda over Coulson or Barton. Especially over Barton.

“What is it, Agent Romanoff?” she asked. 

“Can you meet me tonight, at Dale’s bar?”

Unimpressed, Melinda crossed her arms. “I don’t like the secrecy. Tell me what I’m meeting you about or you’re on your own.” 

“You’re friends with Coulson?” she asked, like she was verifying the answer and at the same time holding that friendship over Melinda’s head. It sounded too much like a threat and Melinda flattened out her expression. “It concerns him,” Romanoff continued. “I don’t want to see him hurt, and Clint wouldn’t understand, so I came to you.”

“Because I offered you an olive branch six months ago?”

“Because of your reputation,” she repeated. “But having had the introduction helped.”

_Trouble._

“2100,” Melinda said, and turned on her heel and left, watching Romanoff’s reflection in the window. The woman watched her leave, not budging at least until she couldn’t see her any longer.

 

Melinda would’ve gone to Coulson if he weren’t out of the country in the middle of an op and completely out of contact. Protocol dictated to go to the next officer superior to the one you were trying to report to, but Melinda couldn’t bring empty accusations to anyone _other_ than Phil. So she met Romanoff alone, in the same, back-corner booth she’d first been formally introduced to her, at 9 o’clock that night in Dale’s bar.

Romanoff was nursing some sort of bar rail with coke in a highball glass. She nodded when Melinda joined her at the table, and Melinda almost didn’t sit, because there were no files in sight, or anything that otherwise indicated Romanoff had a problem she needed Melinda’s help with.

When she dropped into the booth across from the other woman, it was more to avoid causing a scene or bringing attention to them than anything else.

“How’s your memory?” Romanoff asked before Melinda had even thought about taking off her coat, let alone figured out if she was going to be staying long enough to order a drink.

“Good,” she answered.

Romanoff nodded, like she’d suspected this and was just confirming. Abrupt and in control. Melinda thought, looking at this version of Romanoff and adding her impressions of her to the reputation spreading through the office, that she would like the woman better if she didn’t have such a bad first impression of her. There were similarities between them that Barton might’ve seen, and that had informed his initially deciding to make sure the two of them were introduced.

“Whatever you’re about to tell me, there are protocols in place. Information has to be handled a very specific way, and there are avenues that I will have to take if I find it prudent.”

“I’m aware of the avenues,” Romanoff said. “And I’m not asking you not to take them.” Her expression said otherwise. “On my last job with Agent Barton, we were in Kiev for three weeks, with a two-day stint in Minsk at the very end.”

Melinda frowned, but didn’t interrupt her. 

“Minsk is the last place I had contact with my former employers, three hours before Barton caught up with me. Our two days in Minsk were supposed to be a week, but almost as soon as we were on the ground I was found out and our mission was compromised and nearly went to hell.”

Melinda narrowed her eyes. “Barton doesn’t know,” she said. 

“Neither does Coulson,” Romanoff replied. “I slipped off for two hours when I was doing intel and took out the agent who had recognized me.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Melinda asked. “Recounting all of the times you breached protocol on your last mission to me, instead of your partner?”

Natasha used her straw to chase a sliver of ice cube around inside her glass, making the ice rattle against the side. “He had a partner. A woman, who I didn’t see until Barton and I were on the tarmac waiting to return to the States.”

“How do you know she was working with him?”

Natasha gave an unfriendly smile. “I recognized her,” she said, and didn’t elaborate. “I need your clearance level.”

Melinda laughed, low and out of sheer surprise. “I’m not giving you access to classified documents after you’ve told me a story about going off the grid after recognizing two people from your past, who I assume worked Russian intelligence alongside you.”

“I only need to know what S.H.I.E.L.D. has on the woman I recognized. I can give you the name to run.”

It didn’t make sense for Romanoff to have brought this to her instead of to Barton or Coulson. Someone who had slipped off the grid in the middle of a mission to deal with a threat without telling her partner or handler didn’t just come to another agent, one she barely knew beyond reputation, to spill the beans.

“This agent you killed. The one who recognized you,” Melinda said. “What did he say to you before he died that spooked you?”

Romanoff didn’t say anything, confirming Melinda’s suspicion on that count, at least.

“I’m not inclined to help you out of the goodness of my heart at the expense of my position, Agent Romanoff. You’re not going to sway me by demanding things and not giving me anything in return. I offered to lend you an ear while you were settling into S.H.I.E.L.D. I didn’t volunteer this.”

Romanoff bowed her head a little and smiled, a wry and almost sarcastic twist of her lips, at the table before she looked back up. “I have reason to believe he and the woman he was working with were operating under the Red Guardian. Never mind that I thought he was deceased, he now knows I am not.”

“The Red Guardian. Russia’s answer to Captain America?” 

“The U.S.S.R.’s, but yes, he remained loyal through the collapse and is an agent of the new government.”

“Your claiming to know the Red Guardian isn’t helping you in this conversation,” Melinda said. 

“I understand that, Agent May, and that’s why I didn’t mention him at the beginning. I need you to run this name.” Romanoff pulled a post-it note from her pocket and passed it to Melinda. On it were two words in Cyrillic script, and Melinda memorized the woman’s name before crumpling up the paper and shoving it in the remains of Romanoff’s ice and coke dregs.

“I’ll run it. I’m going to be running the Red Guardian, too, and when your name comes up we’ll be meeting again.”

Romanoff nodded, expression blank and not giving away whether the meeting had gone the way she wanted or not. Melinda rose and left. She didn’t have the clearance level to know if the rumours spreading around S.H.I.E.L.D. about Romanoff were true. She’d tried to check that name, Black Widow, before she’d come out to this meeting. But maybe the names Romanoff had given her would tell her more.

 

vi.

Natasha flagged down Dale for a second drink when May left, and spent the time waiting for it to come with her fingers pressed against her eyes, head in her hands. This had been a bad idea, but better to go to May than Coulson or Clint. She’d come close to telling May that Alexei was in America. So close. But with the older woman doubting her the way she was, there wouldn’t have been any way of telling her without her assuming that Natasha had helped him into the country.

She hadn’t, of course, but May had every reason to disbelieve every word that came out of Natasha’s mouth.

“Alright, Natasha?” Dale asked when he brought the drink. She nodded and pulled the glass over. 

“Close out my tab, please,” she said. “That’s it for me tonight.” 

He nodded and smiled at her, taking away her other glass with the dissolving post-it note inside. 

Natasha sipped at her drink, wishing the alcohol had more of an effect on her because she could stand to be lightheaded and thinking less tonight. No logic lay behind her reasoning for unloading to May instead of to Coulson or Clint. For that matter, no reasoning hid anywhere behind the decision either. 

Sure, she’d meant what she said about needing May’s clearance level to access some of the information she thought lurked in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files. She also knew that Coulson could get her the information if she asked. (She and Clint were the same level, so he couldn’t help her there, even if she’d wanted to get him involved.) 

She’d emptied the drink before any inkling of thought came to her, and left the bar uncomfortable with the feeling that she might not be able to hold herself accountable for her own erratic decision making.

She would go and talk to Clint if she could, but she needed to keep the knowledge of Alexei’s presence in America to as few people as possible, for the moment. If S.H.I.E.L.D. had already found out through other sources, Natasha was sure May would report that back to her—if only to fire off accusations—and then she could control who else she informed, if anyone. 

On the threshold of her assigned quarters in S.H.I.E.L.D., her reasoning for going to May over Clint or Coulson dawned on her. Either of them would support her, true, but she cared about their judgment of her. She clutched the door handle, leaning forward and putting her weight on the key she turned in the keyhole, hearing it click and not opening the door. She cared what they thought of her, and about them, and this could go unbearably awry for her, and for them, if she got them involved. 

It was easier to put the burden on May, whose reputation she respected and who she knew would do what the protocols required, but whose opinion of her she could afford to be negative. She didn’t know May well, certainly not well enough to care about her, and that would be the saving grace in her decision. 

Still, Natasha went to bed feeling uneasy rather than sure of herself. She’d never thought that coming to S.H.I.E.L.D. would be easy, and she’d never assumed it to be an escape from her past. But this… even if she’d wasted the time thinking of ways that she might have to deal with who she’d been, she wouldn’t have come up with this scenario.


	4. Chapter 4

vii.

The Red Guardian. The name belonged in the pages of history where Captain America had fallen, in stories of the Cold War and documents about operatives of the K.G.B. before the fall of the U.S.S.R. It didn’t belong in the search bar of her computer, put there by a woman whose name, Melinda would put money on, was hidden beneath the bold black redacted bars scattered through the documents she was reading. 

Melinda tapped her fingers on her desk, wishing she didn’t feel as though she were in the middle of an illicit activity, and for a woman she didn’t even particularly like. In the morning, she would be filing the appropriate paperwork and going through the proper channels to get the information Romanoff had dropped on her looked at. Until then, she needed to learn for her own curiosity what might be going on.

The name of the woman Romanoff had given her had brought up a thin file. Russian intelligence. The term ‘Red Room,’ which Melinda was unfamiliar with but, reading through the lines, seemed to be a government training program. That was interesting, if that was how Romanoff had known her. 

Melinda printed off the files the system would allow her to, and read over the others a few times, memorizing them. Romanoff wanted this information brought back to her, and Melinda suspected it was so she could vanish long enough to hunt the other woman down and take her out as well, and maybe remove the Red Guardian from the question while she was at it. 

Whether a personal vendetta or the defence of herself and her own interests, S.H.I.E.L.D. had its own way of doing things for a reason, and Romanoff couldn’t step outside of the system just because it wasn’t working for her. That she’d admitted to doing it once already wasn’t promising.

She should never have agreed to meet Romanoff at the bar, but she’d been drawn in with worry that the woman had dragged Phil into something, and it didn’t escape her notice, now, that Romanoff had hardly mentioned why she thought Coulson and Barton were at risk in this little escapade. 

Melinda recognized when she’d been played, and Romanoff was an expert to have kept her from realizing it until the very last moment. She’d need to watch out in her interactions with her in the future, be more on guard than she had been, for all the good it would do her now that she knew how close to the chest Romanoff played it, and how observant she was.

 

As soon as she arrived at Headquarters the next morning, Melinda checked and double-checked the paperwork she needed to file to classify this _thing_. She was halfway through filling out the second form before she nearly dropped her pen from surprise, her subconscious, working in the background since she’d met with Romanoff, arriving at a conclusion she hadn’t already entertained.

Romanoff wouldn’t have gone into their meeting assuming she’d have Melinda’s silence leaving it. Everything Melinda had seen of her suggested she was more intelligent than that. She couldn’t get into the woman’s brain, couldn’t know why she’d chosen to reveal information to someone she was barely acquaintances with, but it was clear she wanted the information she had to be passed on to the requisite channels in S.H.I.E.L.D. 

Why she hadn’t passed on that information herself—including filing a proper mission report instead of going off the grid—and what motives lay beyond her wanting this information to get out were the parts that Melinda couldn’t work out. Unless she really was only worried about Coulson and Barton, and loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D. and trying to balance that loyalty. Melinda could imagine finding that balance being difficult for an agent who had already defected once.

Melinda finished filling out the paperwork, readying herself for the inevitable meeting regarding how she’d come by the information, and sent it off. It didn’t matter what Romanoff’s motives were. She’d handed the information about her breech of protocol, the Russian agent she’d killed, and the other one who might be a threat to S.H.I.E.L.D., never mind the Red Guardian—whatever role he played here, if any at all.

She’d done her duty, and passed on what Romanoff had given her. Now to await the fallout.

 

After a week had passed and Melinda hadn’t heard anything back about her report, she sought Romanoff out again. It took more than a little bit of hunting, and asking after her to various people, before she found the woman sparring with Barton in one of the lower gyms. A small crowd, four people who had no doubt been using the gym before the two had come along, had gathered loosely around, watching them. Melinda tucked herself in the space between the open door and nearest cabinet and joined the spectators. 

Melinda could understand standing and watching the two. Young and at the peak of fitness, both wearing tight workout clothes and freer, more expressive and animated, unguarded, than she’d seen either of them before, even having seen them outside of work.

They’d been at it a while. Both had hairlines damp with sweat. Barton’s breath came in sharp, adrenaline fuelled breaths, his face flushed. Hair had slipped out of Romanoff’s braid and her curls frizzed, spiralling up and away from her head where sweat didn’t weigh them down. 

The strength of their partnership reflected in the way they moved together, neither getting more than a beat ahead before the other caught on and blocked the next strike, neither on the defensive for more than a moment before managing to get the better of the other and force them into blocking.

Romanoff swept her foot out in a feint that tripped up Barton. He hopped to stay clear of a foot that was no longer there. A surprised shout came out of him when his partner’s legs wrapped around his neck and brought him down to the maps with a _thump_ , her hair flying out in a spectacular arc behind them, bare legs showing taut, defined muscles with so much control avoid snapping her partner’s neck with that move.

Barton hit the mats twice with one flat, open hand and Romanoff rolled up off of him. The smile she gave him to accompany the hand she held out to help him up was brilliant and teasing.

“Cheater,” he said, getting to his feet. 

She laughed, a moment of the sound rich and throaty before she cut it short, glancing around the room and noticing their audience. She ran her hand back through the loose bits of hair poking up over her head, flattening them, and crossed to a bench with two towels on it. One she threw to Barton, the other she patted down her face with.

“Sore loser,” she retorted.

The show over, the spectators split off, a couple going back to their workouts and the others leaving the gym altogether. Melinda assumed neither of them could have missed her standing there, but waited for acknowledgement before approaching.

“Yeah, I’m the one who goes all icy and gives the cold shoulder for three hours when I lose,” Barton said, throwing his towel at her. 

Romanoff caught it, made a face, and dropped it, wiping her hand off on her own towel. “Disgusting, Barton.”

He grinned at her. She only shook her head and rolled her eyes before turning.

“Agent May,” she greeted, and Melinda took the address as an invitation to approach. “What brings you here?” And that question had been laced with a dangerous tone and a glint in Romanoff’s eye that Melinda read as warning not to say anything around Barton, who was glancing between the both of them, gone from relaxed after his workout to on alert.

“Am I interrupting?” Melinda asked. “There was something I wanted to speak with you about, Agent Romanoff. It can wait.”

With both of them facing her, Romanoff was out of Barton’s immediate line of sight, her eyes still narrowed in warning. “We’re done,” she said. “I’d like to take a shower and change first.”

Melinda nodded. Barton looked back and forth between them again, and he looked about to say something, but Romanoff smiled at him and shook her head. He glared at her. 

“You can wait here, I won’t be long,” Romanoff added. Melinda nodded to show she’d heard, and took a seat on one of the benches, opening the folder she’d brought along with her and turning her attention to the files in it.

Barton didn’t take the hint. The door to the women’s change room closed behind Romanoff and he came stalking over almost as soon as it had. He came to a stop in front of her, standing close enough to cover her in his shadow. Melinda made a show of wrinkling her nose.

“Personal space, Barton, you reek.”

He backed off a step or two. “What’s going on?” he demanded. He still had a lean to his posture, trying to read the files she had open, and Melinda shut the folder with a snap. 

“It’s between myself and Agent Romanoff.”

“I’m her partner,” he said. “And I’m still responsible for her.”

“The badge giving her Level 2 clearance says otherwise,” Melinda said. 

Barton dismissed that with a wave of his hand and a shake of his head. “Yeah? Just means she does more for S.H.I.E.L.D. because they can let her in on more.”

“Clint. Leave it alone,” Romanoff said, coming back out of the change room in jeans, t-shirt and leather jacket, hair wet from her shower and piled on her head in a bun, face fresh and unmade up. 

Barton gave her a furious look. “We’re going to talk,” he said.

Romanoff lifted her shoulders in a gesture that could have been acceptance, or nothing more than a shrug. “Later,” she said. She gestured for Melinda to exit the room ahead of her.

Barton fumed behind them as they left.

 

“You still haven’t told him?” Melinda asked, though the answer to the question had been evident from the way the two had interacted in the gym. It was a good way to broach the topic, and the reason she’d sought out Romanoff in the first place, though, even if the other woman already knew why she’d come.

“What did you find?” Romanoff asked, apparently agreeing that there was no point to her answering the question. Romanoff’s relationship with Barton wasn’t any of her business, anyway, though Melinda didn’t find it promising if Romanoff was willing to throw it away. 

Everything the rumour mill said about the two of them said Barton and Romanoff got along well. If that relationship fell apart, Romanoff’s loyalties could be thrown to the wind.

Melinda understood trusting Romanoff’s skill, but it was hard to trust the motives of a spy who had turned against her employers once before, and she still hadn’t worked out what made Romanoff tick.

“What’s your relationship to the Red Guardian?” Melinda asked. 

A shadow of frustration flitted across Romanoff’s face at having received another question in response to her question. Good.

“I don’t have one, “ she said.

“You’re lying.” Melinda came to a stop in the hallway and turned to Romanoff so that they were standing nose to nose, within a foot of each other and only not touching by inches. 

“You’ll find that I’m not,” Romanoff replied, and if she was bothered by how close they were standing, she didn’t show it. 

“I want to know,” Melinda said, keeping her voice low should anyone walk by, “Why I filed a report about your breech of protocol and mention of the Red Guardian over a week ago, and I haven’t heard anything about it yet.”

Romanoff raised an eyebrow. “I would be the wrong person to ask,” she said. “The information on Katya?”

Melinda handed her the folder. “What’s the Red Room?” she asked as Romanoff took it.

Romanoff’s face darkened, emotion rising in her eyes that she hid by looking away, down at the folder as she took it from Melinda. “I don’t know,” she replied, a half-hearted lift to the last word that clashed with the hard tone in her voice, like she was trying to spin the lie into a question but had just generally made the phrase into a muddled mess instead.

Melinda had caught her off guard, and she hadn’t expected to. Hadn’t expected to so much that she let Romanoff leave without a parting shot, and without calling after her to find out more about the Red Guardian.

 

viii.

Natasha had expected Clint to come after her like a storm cloud and he didn’t disappoint, bursting into her room later that evening and filling the entire doorway with his bulk. He glowered down at her, sitting on her bed and reading through the files May had given her on Katya for the dozenth time. There wasn’t anything useful in the files. They were at her clearance level, and May hadn’t brought her anything she couldn’t have gotten herself. There was certainly nothing to suggest she might be connected to the Red Guardian—even though she was—or that she’d been in Minsk recently—even though she had. 

Natasha had expected more of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s intel. She’d been disappointed, and now May had more information on her than she particularly wanted the woman to have. 

“What’s going on?” Barton demanded, slamming her door behind him. The little bookshelf she had mounted on the wall rattled. 

“Nothing,” she answered, giving him a demure look that she knew he didn’t buy. 

“When did you ask May to do something for you? Why her?”

Natasha still couldn’t answer that question for herself, not really, and she didn’t want to tell Clint it was because she was trying to keep him out of danger, so she shrugged instead. “Agent May has a higher clearance level than I do. Besides, you introduced us and wanted us to be friends.”

“Yeah, six months ago,” he said. “What did you need her to get you, Natasha? You can’t do shit like this, you may be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent now but they can throw your ass back in prison any time they want.”

As if she didn’t know exactly where she stood with S.H.I.E.L.D.

“You’re being overprotective,” she accused.

“Damn straight I am,” he snarled. “Because you need protecting from yourself, _clearly_. May won’t tell me what’s going on. _You_ won’t tell me what’s going on. I don’t like being left out of the loop, Natasha.”

She bowed her head and closed the files because he was inching closer, clearly wanting to read them.

“And if I don’t have the clearance to see those, then you don’t, and that’s a whole other load of shit.”

“Let it go,” Natasha said. “She didn’t give me anything I can’t access on my own, anyway.” Natasha waved the files at him. 

“Then why aren’t you letting me see them?”

“Because they won’t mean anything to you, and I don’t want you involved,” she replied, getting angry now, because yes, Clint was her friend, but she was trying to keep him out of this. He didn’t need to be involved.

“Yeah? Why?”

She glared at him and Clint deflated.

“Let me in, ‘Tasha.”

“I will come to you if I need you,” she promised, each word coming slowly. “But until I do, I need to keep this to myself.”

“And apparently, to May,” he said with a scowl.

He probably wanted her to apologize for cutting him out. She didn’t, because she might’ve been sorry for making him react this way, but she wasn’t sorry for her actions. Her actions, whatever he might think of her if and when she eventually told him, were going to keep him safe. She wouldn’t apologize for that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm changing posting day to Sunday from now on, to accommodate my having taken a new job. :)

ix.

“I received your report concerning Agent Romanoff. I think it got buried on my desk when I was out of the office. Before we get into it, I need to point out that you haven’t been fond of her since S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited her,” Phil said, almost all in one breath, standing at the entrance to Melinda’s cubicle. 

“She’s been a good fit so far,” he continued when Melinda didn’t say anything. “And while the contents of the report are something to consider, I also think that we need to weigh how your impressions of her might have informed the route you took.”

“You think I’m paranoid,” Melinda said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” She turned her attention from her computer screen to Phil, who had a bit of a pleading expression on his face and she didn’t know why. “What do you see when you look at her?”

“A lost woman fighting for a second chance,” Phil replied, at once. He’d thought about this.

“That’s not what I see,” Melinda replied. “I think that’s the image she’s decided to cultivate for us.” Phil appeared to be biting down on the inside of his lip, and she scowled at him. “What?”

He shook his head.

“ _What_ , Phil?”

“You do sound a little paranoid,” he said, the tiniest bit of reluctance painting the admission.

“I’m being careful,” Melinda said. “You aren’t the least bit concerned that she slipped off and killed an enemy agent without informing her partner or yourself?”

“It’s being handled,” Phil replied.

Melinda let her raised eyebrow tell him what she thought of that answer, and Phil shrugged. “I can’t say anything more about it while it’s in the works, but now that I’ve read your report, it’s being handled.”

“What about the mentions she made of the Red Guardian? Can you tell me anything about that?”

Phil frowned at her. “The bar. 2100 tonight. Don’t expect anything above your clearance level,” he said, and then left.

At least she knew that her report hadn’t disappeared into the depths of S.H.I.E.L.D. never to be addressed. That was marginally promising.

 

She and Phil spent an awful lot of time at this bar; Melinda reflected when she’d ordered that night for both herself and him because he was running late.

When he came in, Phil had an accordion folder tucked under one arm and looked harried. He tossed the folder at her as he sat down. 

“Got a job for you,” he said. “And you’re going to hate me for it.”

She didn’t open the folder. “I’m off the clock,” she reminded him. 

“So is this job. Officially.” Phil eyed his beer, picked it up and downed a quarter of it in one smooth gulp before he continued. “You don’t have to say yes.”

“Except I gather that I do,” Melinda replied, eyeing the folder now like it might bite. “Does this have to do with—”

“Yes. I’m sorry. She wasn’t clear why she’d gone to you with it, and she wasn’t pleased with having to tell me what she’d told you, but I managed to get a bit more out of her. I was in and out of meetings with the Director all afternoon, after we spoke. That’s why I was late. We were patching this together.” Phil tapped the folder with his index finger.

“So this is completely unsanctioned?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t want to start a war with Russia. There’s no extraction. You’re in dark.”

“By myself?” Melinda asked.

“Two-man team,” Phil said, looking horrified at the thought of sending Melinda in on her own under the conditions he’d just outlined.

Melinda groaned. “Let me guess.”

“You’re both professionals. I think you’ll find you get along better than you think you do.”

Melinda leaned across the table, because there was a little alarm bell going off in the back of her head and years of experience had taught her to always listen to it. “I can’t trust her at my back.”

“I trust her at mine.”

She sat back again, hard, and took a drink of beer, because she knew what he was doing. “I’m not you, Phil,” she reminded him. 

“Look at the packet,” he said. “Like I said, you don’t have to accept this. But you already have part of the intel, and you have the skill set to get it done.”

“Who’ll you bring in if I don’t?”

“Barton, probably, but he’d be backup. We’d be sending her in alone.”

It was Romanoff’s reaction to her question about the Red Room floating up in her mind’s eye that made Melinda finally open the packet. The accordion folder had pages in each of its sections, photographs and files and directions, most of which Melinda assumed were the only copy of each and wouldn’t be found anywhere on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s servers.

“Who is the Red Guardian?” she asked, skimming one of the pages sideways, not drawing it out of the file.

“Alexei Shostakov. Most of the information on him was given to us by Agent Romanoff. We thought he was dead until recently.”

“So did she,” Melinda murmured. “How did he get onto American soil?”

“We don’t know.”

“Romanoff didn’t help him?” she asked, sceptical.

Phil shook his head. “We don’t think so. If Agent Romanoff had helped him into the country, why would she inform us that he was here?”

Melinda gave him a flat look.

“We have no reason to believe she’s a double agent,” Phil said, interpreting the look. “While it’s true that she hasn’t been using the proper channels for handling the information she came across, we still believe Natasha Romanoff is loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“You and the Director?”

Phil nodded. 

“You need to know right now?”

“In the next 12 hours.”

Melinda nodded, twisting her lips in distaste. “I’ll be in touch.”

 

Melinda read the files in full twice before she even started to consider whether or not she’d be accepting the job. On the third read through, she started thinking about positions and places. 

S.H.I.E.L.D. knew, according to the files, that the Red Guardian was in New York. Natasha Romanoff, though the pages didn’t say it, had provided that information. The information was two weeks old. Shostakov could have moved on.

Romanoff didn’t think he had. 

Why?

Because as far as she knew—and this the files _did_ say—she was his target.

S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted the Red Guardian removed, and not just from the country. It was a two-man job, and they’d designed the op (she used the term ‘designed’ loosely, tracking down and taking out Shostakov without making a scene of it wasn’t a plan) to be ideally carried out by herself and Romanoff.

Coulson had asked her about the job as a heads-up, because they were friends, but she knew he wouldn’t pass over her in favour of Barton if she tried to say no. He’d just convince her.

Taking ops like this was part of the job; part of working for S.H.I.E.L.D. She’d do it. She’d seen Romanoff move, seen the quality of Agent she was—at least in terms of hand-to-hand. She didn’t need to worry about Romanoff’s ability to keep up.

Phil thought she didn’t need to worry about Romanoff’s loyalties, either. But going into an op, dark and without recourse, with a woman who was both still quite new to S.H.I.E.L.D. and tied closely, personally, to the op, would make Melinda worry even if she didn’t think Romanoff’s loyalty to S.H.I.E.L.D. was still questionable. 

Phil trusted Romanoff. The trust she put in Phil, and his ability to read people, was going to have to keep her sane on this until he’d figured out if she could place trust in Romanoff as well. Easier said than done.

Early the next morning, before her 12 hours were up, Melinda sought out Coulson. With a nod, she accepted the job.

 

Phil came to get her and brought her to his office a couple of hours later when it was time for the mission briefing. Romanoff was already there, sitting on his couch, though she rose to attention quickly when the door opened and they arrived. A look crossed her face, her gaze flicking up and down Melinda’s body, and Melinda didn’t think it was surprise, exactly. She was sure Romanoff would’ve received the same preliminary details about this op that she had, but still, the woman hadn’t fully expected Melinda to be here and that was interesting.

Then again, Melinda had doubts about how willing she would’ve been to take on the task if she’d felt she had any choice in the matter. She suspected Romanoff could tell.

“You aren’t bothered about the lack of evac?” Melinda asked when Coulson had finished outlining the mission parameters. 

Silence answered her for a moment, until Romanoff realized she’d been addressed. “Of course not,” she said, and there was an expression of surprise on her face that Melinda didn’t think she was feigning. 

Melinda nodded, accepting the answer in the spirit it had been given. 

“Agent Romanoff,” Coulson said, “Is there anything else you can tell us about Red Guardian before we lose contact with you?”

“No,” she said. Melinda glanced at Coulson, meeting his eyes and reading the same scepticism there that she felt. Romanoff was hiding something. She didn’t think it was something likely to impact the op—but she only thought that because if Coulson was still letting it go forward, he didn’t think that one of the assets on it was compromising it.

Still. It didn’t sit well with Melinda that her partner going into this was hiding something. Not when Romanoff had admitted to her that on her most recent op she’d taken off without permission to deal with her own agenda.

Romanoff should be facing a court-marshal right now for insubordination, she shouldn’t be being sent on dangerous ops. 

Not Melinda’s call, of course, but she hung around after Romanoff had been dismissed to talk with Phil, anyway.

“You’re not sure. I’d rather you not do this if you’re not sure, of Romanoff or yourself. I don’t want to lose either of you to this op.”

“And you’re telling me you _are_ sure?” Melinda replied. 

Phil sat down on a corner of his desk. “I would be surer if you were sure.”

“Who’s on first?” Melinda said and crossed her arms. Phil smiled. “In all seriousness, Phil, it’ll get done. I don’t like it, but it’ll get done.”

Coulson nodded. “She’s good. One of the best I’ve ever seen. I think S.H.I.E.L.D.’s going to end up being lucky to have her, maybe not so far down the line. But, Melinda, I think she’s closer to this than she’s letting on. Closer than being Shostakov’s target, and I haven’t figured out what it is yet, and she’s keeping quiet. Try to find out, if you can.”

“It’s on my agenda already,” Melinda said. “You’re not going to warn me off being too harsh on the rookie?”

“She’s only a rookie here.”

 

On a dark op, Romanoff's being a S.H.I.E.L.D. rookie didn't matter, as long as she and Melinda could agree on procedures and actions well enough to complete the mission under the assigned parameters.

The most difficult part of this mission, outside of working with Romanoff, at least, was going to be being set up almost down the street from HQ without being allowed to make any contact until the op was done.

"You're fine with this?" Melinda asked. Romanoff was rooting through a duffel bag in the far corner of the little apartment they'd been set up in for a safe house and base. That was all S.H.I.E.L.D. had given them.

Romanoff looked over at her, one eyebrow raised. "Please don't feel as though you have to continually check in with me," she said. "I'm fine." She hesitated, then continued. "Can we discuss the mission?" she asked, and sounded as hesitant as her pause had suggested.

"Of course," Melinda replied. Romanoff didn't look up her, but she nodded in the direction of her duffel bag and paused in sorting through her things, hands on her knees and holding herself in a crouch. Melinda was about to prompt her when she started speaking.

"I don't think Shostakov is still in New York."

Melinda frowned at her because of all she might have been expecting to hear those words hadn't been high on the list. "Why didn't you mention that in the briefing?" she asked, voice as delicate as she could make it, because if their target wasn't even in the city, then being here was a waste of time.

Romanoff pulled a cheap looking cell phone out of her bag and powered it on, looking grim.

"I try not to share information I don't know the truth of first hand," she replied, looking down at the phone face. She wiped a thumb across the front of it, clearing something off of the screen that Melinda couldn’t see. “At least in instances like this.”

“Where is the target, Romanoff, if he’s not in New York?”

Lips pressed together, thin and draining of colour even under her lipstick, Romanoff waved the phone before setting it down in the middle of a table. “That will ring in the next half hour and let us know.”

“How am I supposed to trust you if you’re keeping this much from S.H.I.E.L.D.?” 

Romanoff frowned at her, tilted her head to one side, and though Melinda had thrown the question out as an accusation and had meant it to be rhetorical. Romanoff looked to be giving it serious weight.

“My goal isn’t to ruin this mission, or to throw it in favour of some other employer,” she said, and Melinda could see she was choosing her words with care. “But regardless of my having come to you about this, initially, Agent May, I don’t expect your trust. 

“However, we need to be able to work with one another for the duration of this mission. I will share anything relevant to the success of the operation with you, as you’re working it with me. Any extraneous details, so there aren’t any surprises. I expect you’ll do the same.”

Melinda crossed her arms, aware they were both having this conversation and watching the phone throughout instead of looking at one another. 

“There needs to be some trust if this is going to work. I don’t…” Melinda sighed, aware she was close to travelling through heart-to-heart territory and not wanting to do it, but also aware that they were going to get in each other’s way if they didn’t reach some sort of understanding. 

“I don’t agree with Coulson’s method. He shouldn’t have thrown us in this together without any preamble, or any foreknowledge. We should have at least had a couple of rounds of required training together. That’s protocol at S.H.I.E.L.D. Not this.”

Natasha moved into her line of sight. “We don’t need it,” she said. “S.H.I.E.L.D. has a soft touch in many things, and that’s one of them.”

“We don’t like losing people to stupid mistakes, or personality clashes.”

“Do you think we’re clashing, Agent May?” Romanoff asked, and that was the second time she’d been careful to use Melinda’s title instead of just firing her name at her. Melinda had thought it was passive-aggressive mocking, an underhanded jab of Agent before her name, but nothing else she’d seen from Romanoff suggested any tendencies toward passive-aggressiveness. Romanoff was just being formal, she realized now.

“I think there are exercises that exist that could have helped us to get along better, before there was anything at stake.”

Natasha bowed her head, accepting the point. “In my view, we are both professionals with similar levels of training. Coulson trusts you, and Clint has assured me your reputation isn’t so inflated by rumour, and I trust that. And I remember that, months ago, Clint was interested in our becoming more familiar as colleagues.”

“We didn’t,” Melinda reminded her. They hadn’t spoken at all until Romanoff had come to her two weeks ago and unloaded delicate information onto her. 

And Melinda wondered how she’d been so blind. “You set this up. Why?”

Natasha smiled, her eyes lighting up. “I told you. Your reputation made me seek you out. Clint is wonderful but he doesn’t have the skill set required to deal with the likes of Shostakov, and Katya. He got lucky, once, with a Red Room girl. He wouldn’t again, the odds aren’t skewed in his favour.”

“You said you didn’t know what that meant. Red Room.”

Natasha’s eyes darkened and she looked away. “I lied. And it isn’t relevant.”

“Sounds it.”

The phone rang and Romanoff snatched it up, saving her from the conversation. 

 

x.

‘Stupid’ wasn’t quite the word for what Natasha felt about herself following her conversation with May. Oh, she didn’t feel as though she’d made the best decisions to direct how things would play out going forward, but _stupid_ wasn’t something that Natasha Romanoff was.

The decisions were poor. The slip of the tongue was… unfortunate even in so much as it hadn’t been altogether unintentional. The mind behind them was not misfiring. 

The phone conversation went better than the conversation with May had, and that, at least, uplifted her a little. She didn’t like being the one who had to lead this march. She didn’t like being embroiled in an op she wasn’t sure she was going to come home from.

She didn’t like feeling that S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to leave her out in the cold even when this op came out in their favour. She’d foreseen the difficulties inherent in working with Agent May, in working with someone whose loyalties to her organization were unyielding, who trusted in the system and who had no cause to trust that Natasha, an outsider from a country the United States had shaky ties with even when they were friends, placed that same trust in the system, or had the same loyalty to S.H.I.E.L.D.

And May was right, on all counts. 

But Natasha had her trust placed in Clint Barton, who in turn placed his trust in S.H.I.E.L.D., at least as much as he was able. Yes, a middleman sat there and yes, Natasha thought she might be convinced to leave with Clint if he one day decided S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t giving him what he needed. She was living her second chance. Living her opportunity to correct some of the wrongs she had caused, even if she had no true, good way to go about it.

She turned the phone off as soon as she finished the phone call, and turned to May, who was watching her carefully. Natasha couldn’t tell if May understood Russian or not, not from the stoic expression on her face.

“We need to move,” she said.

May nodded.


	6. Chapter 6

xi. 

From what she’d understood of the conversation, and the way that Romanoff had conducted herself throughout it, Melinda didn’t think that she’d been expecting the call to go the way it had. She thought it even might have been a fluke that anyone had called the phone within the announced half hour of turning it on. She didn’t doubt that the woman knew what she was doing, but she was aware, quite acutely aware, that Romanoff was on Shostakov’s hit list.

The hunted hunting the hunter, even if it made Melinda uncomfortable in her skin and unsure of the outcome of the op to think of it that way.

“Where is Shostakov?” Melinda asked. “What did your contact tell you?” Hearing only one side of the conversation, and as quick and full of short forms Melinda could only interpret as code words as Romanoff’s Russian had been, gave her enough to know that the conversation had contained more than a hint at the location. How much more, she wasn’t sure.

And Romanoff didn’t look shaken, exactly, but she also didn’t have as much confidence in her stance and posture as she had before. Maybe not nerves, but some sort of insecurity or fundamental uncertainty casting itself over how she’d been thinking of the mission.

Romanoff glanced at the clock, powered off the phone and swore. “We need to get out of here,” she said, tossing what few items she’d taken from her duffel bag back into it. “I’ll explain in the car.”

“Have we been compromised?” Melinda asked, gathering her own things up in haste and trying to cover up all signs of their presence in the apartment. “It’s a big building.”

“I’m not concerned about the apartment, I’m concerned about their using the trace to arrive on the street before we’re out of the vicinity.” She glanced around the room, and Melinda could see her running a mental check, making sure they weren’t forgetting anything important, and then she was gone.

On her heels, Melinda followed her down the stairs, the elevators in these old buildings being too slow and uncertain to bother with. She half expected them to meet someone on the stairs. They didn’t.

Romanoff threw her bag in the back seat and moved to get into the driver’s side, stopping short when Melinda was already there.

“I’m driving,” Melinda said. Romanoff twitched and gave her a tight smile.

“You don’t know where we’re going. Would you rather take directions from me?” she asked, and her tone wasn’t challenging, but it also wasn’t mild anymore. And she did have a point, but Melinda let out her breath in a frustrated, terse exhale and let the driver’s side door slam shut when she got out and stalked to the passenger side, instead of leaving it open for the other woman.

She had hardly fastened her seatbelt before Romanoff pulled away from the side of the road and gunned it.

 

Romanoff sped the whole damn time, checking the rear view mirror more often than was necessary, like she was afraid they were being followed, and not speaking a word. 

They’d crossed two state lines before she finally said, “The Red Guardian and I have history.”

Melinda swivelled her head from the window to look at her, not having expected confession hour to ever come, let alone now after they’d been in a car silent for two hours. She didn’t make a sound. Romanoff seemed to want to talk, and Melinda suspected that noise would disrupt that.

“We were married, years ago. By the state, before he was the Red Guardian and before I was Black Widow.”

Melinda swallowed her surprise at the admission. The rumours had been true, it seemed, and she supposed she shouldn’t have doubted it with how prevalent they’d become around S.H.I.E.L.D., even if it all had seemed farfetched to her.

“Before?” Melinda asked, realizing what had been said and cursing herself for interrupting, but needing to prompt the question.

Romanoff took her eyes off the road long enough for a glance at her and mysterious smile. 

“Before,” she confirmed. “I thought Alexei was dead, and only found out later that I’d been led to believe that because they wanted the Red Guardian to be without ties.”

“Black Widow,” Melinda repeated.

Romanoff’s smile turned sad, and a little wistful. 

“You’re prepared to kill him? Or is that why you wanted me along?” Melinda asked. 

“I don’t harbour feelings for him anymore,” she said. “It won’t be a problem. But you wanted to know what I was holding back. Now you do.”

“Thank you,” Melinda said. 

Romanoff smiled.

 

It turned out that Romanoff had a safe house in Maine, and she wouldn’t tell Melinda if she’d acquired it before or after defecting and joining S.H.I.E.L.D., but she assured her that it was safer than where they’d been, and that they were closer to Shostakov here. 

“How do you expect to find him?” Melinda asked, inspecting the small arsenal that Romanoff had brought with her in the duffel bag.

“Alexei will come to me,” she said, checking the magazine on a handgun before slipping it into her thigh holster. “Because I will tell him to come to me.”

She certainly sounded like she’d been married to him, anyway. 

“What if that doesn’t work?” Melinda asked, keeping her voice mild because they’d been getting along and there wasn’t any point to ruining that now. 

“If he doesn’t come himself, he’ll send Katya,” she said.

“To this safe house?” Melinda asked, because Romanoff had seemed sure of the safety of it, and that tended to preclude inviting your enemies to knock on your door.

Romanoff shook her head, and Melinda felt a little less tense. “There’s a warehouse district nearby. I’ll be going there and turning the phone on. They’ll come to me.”

“That’s not well thought out,” Melinda said, unable to help it.

Romanoff raised her eyebrow. “They don’t know I’m working with anyone. They don’t expect me to be. We’ll have the advantage.”

This felt too much like the not-a-plan that S.H.I.E.L.D. had issued to them in the first place, and now they were in a different state, without any way to get into contact with HQ because the op was dark. The car was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s, true, so someone would no doubt be monitoring it from afar—Coulson, she hoped—and would know where they were, but that wouldn’t be any help if they got into trouble.

“What if they have intel about your working with S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“They don’t,” Romanoff said, sounding sure. “S.H.I.E.L.D. is successful in being an almost non-entity, for how large it is.”

She sounded certain, and Melinda frowned but nodded anyway. “But they know you defected.”

“Yes,” Romanoff said after a moment of hesitation. Melinda wondered if it might have been her choice in words. “They know. I suspect they believe I’ve gone freelance and was trying to lay low in America until I’d fallen off the radar. But they aren’t the type to leave loose ends.”

She looked haunted as she said it, and Melinda didn’t need any further words to know that Romanoff had been sent after people who had defected before her and had been successful in removing whatever threat they were thought to have posed to Russia.

She kept quiet, allowing Romanoff to have the moment of silence she needed.

“We’ll go tomorrow evening,” she said finally.

Melinda made a noise to indicate her assent. That would give them both time to plan and time to rest and prepare themselves for the inevitable showdown.

 

Neither Shostakov nor Katya showed the next evening, or the one after that. On the third day, Romanoff disappeared in the middle of the afternoon and returned with two-way radios so that they could keep in touch better while covering more ground. She wanted them further apart, in case they’d been monitored without realizing it. 

Coulson had meant it when he’d reminded her that Romanoff was only a rookie for her time spent at S.H.I.E.L.D. Since setting up in the safe house, Romanoff hadn’t done anything Melinda wouldn’t have done herself, and had done a few things that Melinda, being less familiar with the situation than Romanoff was, hadn’t thought to do.

She was very much the one running the op, with Melinda only along for the ride and as backup, and Melinda was left reflecting on the way that Romanoff had manipulated the situation to suit her ends. She’d wanted Melinda here with her, said it was because of her reputation, and they certainly had a lot in common. That was undeniable.

If she only wanted backup though, especially backup from a distance like she’d been treating Melinda, she could have brought her usual partner. Barton was backup from a distance. That was the simplest definition of his skill set.

“Romanoff,” Melinda prompted. An hour before they went out for the evening wasn’t the time to have this conversation, but she suspected Romanoff compartmentalized as well a she did. “I realize I’ve asked this, but, why me?”

“Natasha,” Romanoff said, sounding like she’d corrected the name without thinking about it. “We’ve been in close quarters for over 72 hours. You can call me Natasha.” That sounded less absent though she still sat poring over files, the same as she’d been doing.

Melinda didn’t offer her permission to use her given name, and she was sure Natasha noticed, but she didn’t comment on it.

“You’re good at what you do,” Natasha said. “And we seem to work well enough together. Similarly.”

“Mostly, you’ve been working and I’ve been waiting,” Melinda pointed out.

Natasha smiled at her. “Barton would have spent the last three days talking my ear off. I promise you’re a welcome change.”

“You’re good friends, you and Barton?”

Natasha got a far away look in her eye. “We are,” she said, and didn’t elaborate. Melinda nodded. She still suspected they were sleeping together, and that confirmed it more than anything, as far as she was concerned. 

If Natasha Romanoff wasn’t leaking S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets to Russia, Melinda didn’t care who she was sleeping with. And she and Barton were at the same clearance level anyway, so it wasn’t like he could access anything to reveal to her that she couldn’t get a hold of herself.

“We need to go. Early, today,” Natasha said.

Melinda didn’t wait to hear the rationale. Sometime, she didn’t exactly know when, she’d started trusting Natasha Romanoff.

She didn’t know Romanoff well enough to trust her this early in the game. 

Still. Maybe Phil had been right, and she _was_ being paranoid as far as Natasha was concerned. She’d been nothing but trustworthy, in a way that hadn’t been going out of her way to seem trustworthy and thus been suspicious.

The issue here was thoroughly Melinda’s. She could get over it. 

After all, it appeared that she was already doing so.

 

xii.

Natasha didn’t know exactly what it was about being around Melinda May for three days straight, but while she’d held a certain respect for the woman before, borne of her reputation and the way that Clint spoke of her, and the friendship she and Coulson seemed to have, that respect had increased since they’d started working this mission together.

And there was something else.

Natasha didn’t shy away from her own emotions. She’d never done it before—she embraced them and she learned from them and she lived them, even if it got her hurt, even if the people around her didn’t understand that.

But this was one that Natasha wasn’t sure she was going to be able to live. One emotion that she thought it might be safer to keep a lid on, because while Natasha had learned to love before, it didn’t come easily to her. 

She’d loved Alexei, genuinely, but she’d never fallen for someone quite like this before, and she’d certainly never fallen for a co-worker, let alone a woman. She’d slept with them, even since coming to S.H.I.E.L.D. she’d slept with Barton a couple of times but there wasn’t anything more than friendship and comfort involved there, but this… well Natasha wondered, now, if it mightn’t be why she’d wanted Melinda on this op with her in the first place.

It didn’t escape Natasha, either, that though Melinda hadn’t granted her permission to be on a first name basis with her, she’d taken to referring to her, inwardly, by her first name anyway.

She needed them to get through this op. As much as she wanted to deal with it beforehand, Alexei needed to be off her tail. He needed to be out of the country or dead—and the mission parameters said dead, so dead it would be—and before that they couldn’t deal with anything that might compromise the mission.

Natasha’s having a ridiculous crush on her colleague and _admitting_ to it would certainly do that.

So she’d said they needed to leave early, and hopefully could take care of the op tonight, because she didn’t know what she would do with another 24 hours of silent interaction with Melinda May.


	7. Chapter 7

xiii.

The warehouse district had a lot more ambient noise than it had the past two evenings. The earlier hour meant a lot more activity than they’d been seeing. People bustled around, doing their jobs and trying to get to the end of their workdays so they could go home for the evening. Those people were going to make her and Natasha’s job as operatives as difficult as being separate and not knowing if or when Shostakov might show.

Civilian casualties weren’t frowned upon in Shostakov’s world, especially not American ones. Not really. Natasha had told her as much. They were, however, frowned upon by S.H.I.E.L.D., and even if HQ wasn’t acknowledging this op, there would be endless inquiries should anyone other than the targets be killed in the process.

_“Anything?”_ Romanoff asked, buzzing in and out over the radio. The signal wasn’t very good, by design. It was strong enough, good enough, for their use, but its not coming in clear, and with neither of them quiet on the channel, would hopefully stop anyone around who might be on the same channel from overhearing them and working out where they were, or what they were doing.

“Nothing on my end. Yours?” she asked.

The radio beeped, and Melinda waited thirty seconds, then a minute, then two, before radioing again. “Widow, come in.”

_“Fine here,”_ was the aborted message.

Melinda checked her sidearm and made a hard left around the corner at the next intersection between buildings. _‘Fine here’_ was part of the radio code they’d established, a very basic signal indicating Romanoff thought she’d come across something worthy of backup. 

From their starting point, she and Romanoff had spiralled out in opposite directions, weaving back and forth through the narrow alleys, some scarcely wide enough to fit a truck down and others not even that, that lay in a rough grid between the warehouses. Melinda backtracked, picking her way around the crate tops and broken shipping flats that littered this alley—there was a truck up on blocks at the end of it that had clearly stopped it being used as a throughway for some time—and toward the northeast quarter of the district.

The radio codes, simple as they were, had been developed to serve as directional markers as much as signals requesting backup. The northeast quarter of the district wasn’t a definite marker of location by any extent of the imagination, only a direction and a place to start looking. Romanoff would have covered her ground at about the same pace Melinda had covered hers. Slowly, meticulously, and therefore easily enough for a running partner to catch up with.

Romanoff had sounded in control, with no hint of duress in the message, so while the pace Melinda set couldn’t be described as sedate, neither did she see any cause at all for sprinting. Sprinting would call the attention of any onlookers, and Shostakov, if Romanoff had indeed encountered him, would have lookouts. 

No doubt he already knew Romanoff had a partner. Giving herself away as being that partner, and telegraphing her proximity to the scene, was the thing to avoid. She wasn’t the cavalry galloping in—she needed to be able to approach on her own terms.

So Melinda didn’t sprint, or run all out, but her pace was sure and quick and confident.

 

It still took 15 minutes to make it as far as where they’d left the car (a point meant to remain equidistant from them) and Melinda took a moment to look it over for vandalism, or any other sign someone might know who the car belonged to, before she continued on wending her way northeast.

“Still nothing,” she radioed to Romanoff, as though she hadn’t abandoned her own search and wasn’t headed toward Romanoff that very minute.

_“Copy,”_ Romanoff responded after a moment’s wait. The static buzzing through the speaker interfered with the softness of her voice, rendering what must have been a whisper broken and nearly inaudible. Melinda’s steps became lighter, faster, because while whispering may not have been a beacon announcing that Romanoff had found more trouble than before, it certainly hinted at it.

The sound of the radio and Melinda’s checking in could have compromised Romanoff’s position—that was the next thing Melinda needed to entertain as she continued her search—but she’d checked in at the scheduled interval, and presumably Romanoff had expected it and gone to lengths to ensure the sound of the radio wouldn’t give her away.

Still….

The popping of gunshots sounded, dull and low against the sounds of workers shouting at each other and trucks reversing, the noise ricocheting off of the flat warehouse walls and creating echoes that made it impossible to work out where they had come from. 

Melinda left her unassuming pace behind in favour of a run, her hand hovering over the butt of the gun strapped to her thigh.

 

Shots fired made it easy to work out where Romanoff was. It may have been impossible to determine the source of the sounds from where Melinda had heard them, but those who had been close enough had cleared out of the area, not wanting to attract any trouble or to end up in the line of fire: the only advantage to the area being more populated while they were trying to work.

Melinda stumbled over Romanoff more than located her. 

“Need you on the other side,” Romanoff said, her only reaction to Melinda’s appearance.

Melinda raised her eyebrows at the order, but the expression was lost on Romanoff, whose attention remained on the alleyway intersecting with theirs. Down low, her back pressed against the wall and gun in hand, Romanoff had the pose of someone who had been sitting still for quite some time. 

Melinda dropped down next to her, angled back the way she’d come. “Bait was taken?” she asked.

A sharp nod from Romanoff. “Katya was sent.”

“The shots?”

“Hers.”

“Can she give us anything?”

“She’ll have information useful to us,” Romanoff said, the words coming slowly as though she was being careful in their choosing.

“It’ll be getting anything from her, you mean,” Melinda said.

Romanoff nodded again.

Melinda slipped back the way she’d come and veered off, taking careful steps and surveying the area to ensure she was as alone as she seemed to be as she approached the other end of the alleyway Katya had presumably holed herself up in.

“In position,” she said into the radio when she’d reached the far end of the alley. She pressed herself back against the wall, hugging the corner and taking care to keep herself hidden from the sights of anyone down it.

_“Hold. I’m going to engage,”_ Romanoff said. 

“Roger.”

The streetlights had come on, sparse in this area to deter trespassers from hanging around at night, and the sky darkened while they were getting into position. Even with flashlights, the night wouldn’t do any of them favours—Meinda didn’t expect that their opponent, who Romanoff was taking quite seriously, would be any less prepared than they were.

A bang, like a flat pallet falling over onto the concrete, sounded from the other end of the alley. Melinda held her gun pointed toward the ground, weight leaning forward on the foot closest to the alley mouth.

A torrent of Russian in a voice Melinda didn’t recognize met her ears; Katya, spewing out commentary about Romanoff’s allegiances in less than flattering fashion. Laughter from Romanoff in response, an unamused, humourless sound more mocking than anything else.

“Your words don’t hurt, Katya. Where is the Red Guardian?” Romanoff asked in English, her words loud and clear to Melinda’s ears. Trusting that both parties would be facing the other, leaving her unseen, Melinda shifted her weight enough to peer around the corner. 

The skid Romanoff had knocked over to announce her presence made a dark shape on the ground between the tableau of the two Russian agents. Dressed in a leather jacket and jeans with her brown hair tumbling in loose curls down her back—all Melinda could make out—Katya looked young and out of place against Romanoff’s sleek black field suit. The guns in their hands, equally steady and sure in their aiming at one another, created an obvious, visual stalemate.

An unsettled feeling crept down Melinda’s spine, landing in her gut and solidly wedging itself there. She glanced back over her shoulders—one and then the other—standing still and keeping her breathing shallow to keep the sounds of her own body from interfering with the ambient sounds surrounding her. Someone was here, looking over the situation either from a scope in the distance or from above.

By virtue of being the ones holding the burn phone, she and Romanoff had chosen time and place for this encounter. The day, though, that had been entirely in their opponent’s court. Despite quite certainly knowing that Romanoff had a partner on the ground and nearby—assuming she didn’t already know that Melinda lurked at the end of their alleyway—Katya wasn’t acting like she felt cornered, or alone. 

And if she wasn’t acting alone, then she wasn’t alone. 

“Where is the Red Guardian?” Romanoff repeated when enough time had passed without a response from Katya.

And Melinda had to make a choice. She had no way—absolutely no way—of signalling to Romanoff that someone else was here. Not without that person finding out. Not without distracting Romanoff and risking her grip on the standoff. But that didn’t matter. 

Protocols existed for a reason, and Romanoff had as good as told her that her adherence to those protocols were part of the reason she’d wanted Melinda out on this job with her. Whether because Romanoff didn’t trust she would keep herself in line or because it made Melinda a more predictable partner, she didn’t know. But she knew that, just as Romanoff had flaunted S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol and run off to pursue her own ends in Kiev, running off now, whether relevant to the mission at hand or not, would be worse.

“There’s someone else here. I’m going to give chase,” Melinda radioed, turning away from the alley. She didn’t wait for a response from Romanoff, assuming there was none coming. 

A burst of light and the sound of a shot exploded behind her.

 

xiv.

To say it was a wave of relief that flooded through Natasha when the woman she encountered was the same as she’d expected to see was an understatement. A flood had hit her, a torrent of reassurance that she hadn’t lost her touch, and that this new environment wasn’t making her softer.

Even if there didn’t exist a descriptor different from _‘softer.’_

The radio, sitting on the ground by her feet, beeped, the sound soft due to her having turned the volume down, and almost lost to the night air. May’s voice came through it muffled, the beginning of whatever she said lost to static. “…Going to give chase,” all that Natasha could hear well enough to comprehend. 

Her hand dropped. Only a fraction, and a controlled one at that, but it dropped all the same.

Katya pulled the trigger and Natasha threw herself to one side, out of the bullet’s trajectory. Her shoulder hit the wall hard. Their standoff broken, Katya pivoted and ran. Knowing her own backup was gone, if not where she had went, Natasha fired down the alley after her, two quick pops.

Neither bullet flew true, and Natasha wasted a second fetching her radio before she chased after her fleeing opponent.

_“Widow, copy. Widow?”_

“I’m fine,” Natasha responded, her voice as broken up by the pounding of her running footsteps as May’s had been when she’d checked in. “She’s running.”

_“Keep in contact. Rendezvous in half an hour.”_

Natasha wasted another two bullets on the air before following Katya into a warehouse and the dusty maze of stacked boxes inside and losing sight of her altogether. Slowing her steps, Natasha hugged the edge of the group of crates nearest the door. She couldn’t guarantee that the entrance they’d used was also the only way back out again, but it seemed a good bet.

Pressed with her back against a wall of crates, the uneven wood of their flats jabbing into her back, Natasha looked all around and waited. Half an hour would pass quickly. A tiny window of time they had no hope of achieving success in, but May had been right to set it with them separated. Maybe they would get lucky.

She doubted it.


	8. Chapter 8

xv.

Melinda hadn’t completed her half turn back to the alleyway before answering shots echoed down it. A good sign. Fumbling with her radio she stopped the about-face and continued her pursuit. Fighting not to slow her chase, Melinda checked in.

Romanoff was fine. Of course she was, the shots had been a little too far apart to have all come from the same party.

“Keep in contact. Rendezvous in half an hour,” she said. More gunshots from behind her and somewhere off to the side—Romanoff giving chase. The two of them after two separate parties and Melinda feeling more and more like they didn’t have the upper hand here.

Nothing to be done about it.

The shadow of a bulky figure appeared ahead of her and something inside of Melinda relaxed even as she snapped into focus at the first sighting of her opponent. Confirmation that she wasn’t chasing a ghost sent a surge of adrenaline through her. In the dim light, the man remained a shadow in front of her. A shadow she _hoped_ was Shostakov and not yet another associate sent to lead them astray.

A warehouse lay ahead and terminated the road she chased the man down. The long row of windows below the eaves were dark: either blacked out with paint or the operation inside had been shut down for the day and the lights were turned off. Melinda assumed the latter, until her quarry wrenched open the door nearest him. Light spilled out and he darted inside, door slamming shut on his heels.

Melinda slowed, walking until she came to a stop in the shadows of the building across the street. Standing opposite the door she watched, and waited, and weighed.

Strong odds lay in favour of his wanting her to follow him into the warehouse. The likelihood of the first door he tried being unlocked on a warehouse of random choosing was too slim.

She’d been led here, and that sat all right with Melinda. Even if it hadn’t been Shostakov she’d been following, chances were good that he was cloistered here.

 _Numbers_ , though. The gnawing feeling she held dice in her hand stopped her from crossing the street that instant and throwing down the door. Until entering the warehouse stopped looking like a dice toss, where the wrong amount of pips facing up meant a small arsenal hidden behind the steel siding, Melinda wouldn’t do it.

Not without her backup nearby. Not on a black op.

Instead, she glanced up and down the front of the building: one other door on this face, and maybe another one out of sight down where the wall jutted inward before continuing. Too many potential exits, and worse, potential entrances for other parties.

Mindful of the cameras mounted on the upper corners of this and the surrounding buildings, Melinda took care to keep her face tilted, hair falling to conceal her features from most angles. She doubted anyone was monitoring the feeds, but she preferred being unidentifiable should there be playbacks of the tape as well.

Skipping the door the man had used to enter the building, Melinda started the slow task of testing the other doors. She made her way around the building in this manner, making note of which doors could be unlocked from the outside and which needed someone on the inside to let them in.

When she completed her circuit and reached the first door, she was another seven minutes closer to the rendezvous time with Natasha. Fifteen minutes, give or take, and there wasn’t a lot she could do with that much time beyond scoping out the premises.

So much for being the model agent on the team. That was an ideal that was never really going to hold much water anyway.

Pulling her sidearm and holding it at the ready, Melinda entered the warehouse.

She guided the door shut behind her to keep it from slamming. The jamb still made a loud click, but even with the detour she’d taken before entering, Melinda knew she was expected. A little bit of noise wouldn’t make much difference to how quickly they were going to detect her presence.

No one rushed her upon her entry, so Melinda started a slow, slow creep across the open space from the door to the nearest pile of crates. At least this end of the warehouse was used for storage, maybe another area reserved for industry. If there was any machinery in here, it was quiet now.

It was also pitch black, the light from the sparse streetlamps outside trickling through the upper windows but not close enough or strong enough to filter down to ground level. She made her way deeper into the building with the aid of a flashlight, gun held before her at the ready.

Romanoff coming around the corner ahead of her, gun pointed at her so their barrels were nearly in line and eyes squinting against the beam of Melinda’s flashlight, was unexpected. Melinda lowered the beam to the floor and Romanoff came across to her, finger held to her lips.

Confirmation that Shostakov wanted them gathered here, and that this warehouse hadn’t been chosen at random, relaxed Melinda even as it set her mind to calculating the next steps.

“Shostakov is here?” Romanoff asked in a whisper. She’d come to stand next to Melinda, just a little closer than necessary to ensure her words were heard without carrying far.

Melinda nodded. “Both parties still alive?” she asked.

As she’d thought it might, the question made Romanoff shift backward a tad, even as she nodded. If there was a trace of offense to that nod, the dark hid it.

“I lost track of her. I think the best idea would be to draw them out.”

Melinda looked up, following Romanoff’s gaze to the ceiling lights. “Get ready to move,” she said. Romanoff tensed beside her, and Melinda fired two successive shots into the fluorescent bulbs above them.

The light she hit shattered and a moment later the rest of the lights surrounding it came on. She and Romanoff were already on the move, keeping out of the shower of glass fragments when they tinkled against the concrete floor, breaking into even tinier shards, like grains of sand.

“Little rodents hiding in the dark can’t hide any longer!” bellowed a voice in Russian. Melinda rolled her eyes and caught Romanoff doing the same, and she returned the vaguely exasperated lip quirk that Romanoff offered.

The man had shouted from somewhere above them. If they couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see them, not from this angle and with no security mirrors in sight, but with the lights on and their announcement of their presence—a challenge, really—there was little point to hiding for much longer.

Romanoff seemed to agree. Without even a glance back at Melinda to let her know what she was doing, she stepped out into the openness of the wide throughway next to where they’d stopped.

Melinda’s breath caught, lungs holding in air that she released when Romanoff didn’t fall over with a bullet in her chest. She couldn’t see what Romanoff could see, but she could tell by the expression on the redhead’s face that whatever she was looking at didn’t impress her in the slightest.

Gun held in a loose grip by her side, Romanoff began strolling forward, moving out of Melinda’s line of sight with sure, slow steps, the sound of each footfall controlled and confident. Shoulder braced against the crate they’d been hidden behind, Melinda leaned out into the throughway enough to continue providing backup by keeping Romanoff in her eye line and watching her walk forward.

“Where is Alexei Shostakov?” Romanoff asked, speaking in English this time.

“I didn’t think it had been that long, Natasha!” He kept to Russian.

Melinda followed the voice upward, finding a man standing on a landing, thighs leaning up against the railing and bracing his weight. In his hands was a rifle with a scope, overkill for this distance, amateurish, and Melinda could see what Romanoff already had—this wasn’t their guy.

Damn.

Romanoff raised her gun and got a shot off, then another, before the man on the landing could react. He fumbled his weapon and it fell from his hands, landing with a _'crack'_ on the concrete below. The man moaned, holding his shot hand to his chest and fumbling at his waist with his uninjured hand.

“Where. Is. He?” Romanoff continued moving forward.

The man’s fumbling brought a handgun from behind him. Hand shaking so hard he’d never be able to get off a shot, let alone aim, he raised the gun and pointed it down at Romanoff.

Melinda stepped out from her hiding place and assumed a stance that echoed Romanoff’s. She stayed back, even as her partner advanced until she came to a stop at the base of the staircase that led up to the platform the man stood on.

He looked nervous, not nearly as professional as he’d been pretending to be.

“They left you alone here,” Romanoff said. “Didn’t they?”

He bore down on his injured hand, squeezing it against his side with the opposite upper arm, still managing to keep his firearm turned on Romanoff. Romanoff took another step, placing her foot on the lowest step.

He fired.

Romanoff dove out of the way and Melinda fired upward, three quick pops. The first took him in the shoulder, knocking him back, the second and third caught him in the chest on the way down.

Romanoff was back on her feet and taking the stairs two at a time to get up to the man before Melinda could ask her if she’d been hit.

A moment later Romanoff swore, harsh and in Russian. “He’s dead,” she snarled, coming back down the stairs. “And we’re no closer to finding Alexei.”

Melinda raised an eyebrow and slid her sidearm away before collecting the rifle from the floor. “He wasn’t going to help us. This isn’t a good place for interrogation and—“

Romanoff’s cool, unimpressed expression had the barest hint of a scowl to it, and Melinda stopped with the platitudes, but returned the look. This was never going to work in the first place, and eventually Romanoff would realize that. The problem was that floundering around on their own wasn’t working, and they needed resources that HQ wasn’t going to be willing to provide.

Heaving a sigh, Melinda followed Romanoff when she stalked her way back to where they’d left the car.

She insisted on driving when they got there.

 

xvi.

“How did you know without seeing that it wasn’t him?” May asked the moment they’d returned to the safe house, breaking the silence that had sat between them since they’d left the warehouse district.

Natasha didn’t reply immediately, instead grabbing a change of clothes and disappearing into the bathroom where she stripped out of her field suit and frowned at the bleeding bullet graze on her forearm. He’d gotten lucky, getting a shot off that had gone anywhere near her. She’d been stupid, staying in his trajectory.

Letting May drive, though, had meant that she kept the wound hidden—or at least, Melinda gave her the courtesy of not pointing it out or gloating that she’d done exactly the right thing in shooting to kill when Natasha had been injured.

“Russian wasn’t his first language,” she said, coming out of the bathroom with first aid kit in hand. May glanced at the blood on her arm and raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. “He mangled the accent.” And he had sounded nothing like she remembered Alexei sounding, but she doubted the accuracy of her own memory on that and so didn’t mention it.

May nodded.

Natasha tore a strip of tape off the roll with her teeth and, balancing the gauze she was affixing to her arm, carefully stuck it down on one end. May came over and perched on the edge of the bed next to her and offered her hands without a word. Natasha gave her a little smile and let her help.

Her hands were gentle and efficient as she bandaged up the wound, after looking over it with a close eye and checking if it was deep enough to need stitches. May put the first aid kit away after, returning from the bathroom and holding out her hand, palm up with two painkillers in it.

Natasha took them with her good arm and put them down on the table beside the bed. “I don’t need them, but thank you.”

“That doesn’t hurt?” May asked. Her expression said she thought Natasha was being overly macho, and just as loudly said that she wouldn’t stand for it if that was the case.

“I have a very high pain tolerance,” Natasha replied. “It stings.”

“Suit yourself. What’s next?”

Natasha stared down at the bedspread, hating to admit that she didn’t know, that none of this was going according to plan, and that she thought they might be better off counting the mission as unsuccessful and slinking back to S.H.I.E.L.D., tails between their legs.

That wasn’t an option, of course. Alexei was still out there and Katya with him, even if their American partner—that was the only person the man could have been—had been eliminated from the picture. They weren’t winning, but maybe they weren’t quite losing yet, either.

“We find out where he’s hiding and we stop waiting for him to come to us,” Natasha said.

May made a soft _‘hmph’_ sound that could have meant anything.


	9. Chapter 9

xvii.

“I think we need to defer to H.Q. Check in with Coulson. See if there are any new leads,” Melinda said the next morning. As had become their custom, they’d spent the evening in silence after dealing with wrapping Romanoff’s arm. That silence had stretched into this morning, while Melinda cleaned her gun and Romanoff reread her files over and over.

She was sure— _sure_ —that she’d invented the shift in dynamic she’d perceived since Romanoff had hurt her arm. A bullet graze was a minor injury, as far as field injuries went, and Romanoff didn’t seem particularly bothered by it. In another agent—especially one of Romanoff’s age—she’d have labelled it machismo. But she’d read enough of the woman’s file to know that wasn’t the case, or at least not it in its entirety.

She had noted, for instance, that while Romanoff still hadn’t swallowed any painkillers, the pills Melinda had offered her still sat within her easy reach. 

She’d also caught the genuine nature of the smile Natasha had given her when Melinda had offered her help in bandaging up the wound. It had been tiny, almost shy, and why Melinda should find that endearing she didn’t know; maybe because it was so different from the rest of her confident, ex-Russian super-spy personality. Melinda was intrigued.

Intrigued enough that she hadn’t returned the smile, only gone to work making sure Romanoff’s wound was clean before she taped it up.

“I _was_ their lead,” Romanoff said. Frustration painted her voice. “This is what we have to show for it.” She shook the folder, a flick of her wrist that snapped the paper in the air.

Melinda frowned down at the gun in her hands, reassembling it and putting it aside before she answered. Whatever Romanoff had shown her yesterday, it was long buried now, but Melinda filed the expression away with the lost woman she’d seen in the helicopter, transferring Romanoff from the Raft. Bits and pieces of this woman who hadn’t done anything to earn her trust but still seemed to be winning her over anyway. 

She gave Romanoff time to collect herself after the outburst before she looked up.

“It’s been three days. Someone else is working on the intel for this and—”

Romanoff held up a hand, her head snapping up at the same moment. Listening.

Melinda had heard it, too: a scraping noise that was out of place with the stillness of the trees outside of the window. No wind, and a safe house with a long enough drive and neighbours far enough on either side that there was no reason for anyone to be on the property.

Melinda grabbed her gun up from beside her and, out of habit, checked the magazine. Romanoff drew her own gun and crept toward the front of the house. Melinda went to the back.

She took care to keep out of view of the windows as much as possible. The scraping had been so faint, and drowned out by Melinda’s own voice, that it was impossible to tell where it had come from. Better to be safe, and the house was neither deep nor wide anyway, so an onlooker gazing into any window could see a good portion of the house.

A dangerous set up when there was someone after you. Melinda hadn’t seen anyone peering into the windows, and she didn’t think Romanoff had either—she would have said something-but someone could have been looking in, from up close, or from afar.

A bang behind her. The window blew inward and Melinda threw herself to the floor. Heat blazed across her cheek and hair, scorching the bits of skin she couldn’t cover with her arms and knees. Thick black smoke started billowing in through the broken window and the acrid smell of burning steel and rubber and oil filled her lungs.

The car. The car had blown up.

Melinda pulled her sleeve down over her hand and cupped her mouth and nose to try and lessen the amount of black smoke she inhaled. Then she set about finding Romanoff. Having gone to the front of the house, the woman would’ve been a lot closer to the blast radius when the car had gone up. She just hoped that Romanoff hadn’t been outside. 

“Natasha?” she called, and only realized once the name had passed her lips that she’d used Romanoff’s given name. She was also shouting which, while necessary because of the fabric over her mouth and the noise of the fire, was going to give away any advantage to position she had.

She called Romanoff’s name again. This time, a quiet, far-off sounding response reached her ears. Alive, at least, and she didn’t sound under any undue duress but she was definitely outside. 

The front door sat half open, dent in the wall behind it suggesting the force of the blast had knocked it inward and it had bounced back. Where it had only minutes ago been clean and white, the outside face of the door was blackened with ash. The front of the house had suffered the same fate.

Melinda picked her way through the untended garden, skirting as far from the car as she could, gun raised with the barrel pointed upward. Her ears strained for sounds other than the rushing of the flames consuming whatever flammable materials were still in the shell of the car. Sirens. Footsteps. Gunshots. 

Nothing.

“Natasha?” she called again. 

“I’m here.” Romanoff stepped out from the side of the house. Her face and hair were darkened where ash had settled in them, but she looked otherwise unharmed.

“Do you know…?” Melinda trailed off, because Romanoff was shaking her head and holstering her gun.

“I think the car was bugged when we were at the warehouse tonight. We were followed back. They got close enough to plant a bomb on the car, or activate a remote one—I’m not sure which—and then took off. A black car turned right from the drive when I stepped out.”

Melinda processed this. S.H.I.E.L.D. would already be on its way, hopefully diverting the emergency services that were no doubt en route, having been called by neighbours. Romanoff looked frustrated, almost defeated.

“We need to do a circle of the property. Make sure that car didn’t leave anyone behind,” Melinda said.

Not looking convinced that this would be the case, but clearly glad to have something to do other than wait for their superiors to swoop down, Romanoff followed her when Melinda took the lead. 

 

That was one definite plus that she could put in her report for Romanoff’s file at the end of all of this. She certainly wasn’t adverse to elbowing her way in and taking the lead when she thought—okay, knew—that she had the right information. However, her willingness now to step back and let Melinda lead, that was promising and a good sign for how well Romanoff was settling in at S.H.I.E.L.D.

She did wish, though, that it didn’t feel so much like an admission of defeat, coming from Romanoff. Not that Romanoff’s face wasn’t set in a firm, pissed off expression. Not that she looked as though she was about to hang her belt and walk away from this. She didn’t. But neither did she seem to have any idea of a direction from here, and that bothered Melinda more than she liked.

They kept their circle of the property slow and methodical. It would have no doubt been faster for them to split apart and cover more ground, but separating hadn’t done them any good up to now.

They didn’t come across another soul until they’d completed their loop and returned to the front of the house. The scene waiting for them was hectic, crowded. The car fire had been extinguished and S.H.I.E.L.D. techs surrounded the burnt out shell, instruments whirring.

Coulson crossed to them as soon as he spotted them, the sweep of his gaze an instant assessment that took in their drawn firearms and the bandage over Romanoff’s graze. Melinda holstered her gun.

“We’re in Maine,” Coulson said, stopping in front of them. Melinda halted almost mid-step, and Romanoff fell into line beside her. “I imagine there’s an explanation for it.”

“We followed—“ Coulson raised a hand and Romanoff stopped speaking. 

“Inside,” he said, and turned and led the way.

Melinda caught a moment’s hesitation from Romanoff before she followed. She hadn’t seen anything incriminating within the walls of the house—and she’d looked, taking the time when she could and Romanoff was otherwise occupied—but the simple matter of it going on S.H.I.E.L.D. record where a personal safe house was would have Melinda hesitant as well. And Romanoff, though she hid it well, was still skittish when it came to S.H.I.E.L.D.

Once inside, Coulson looked around the main sitting room. The couch, positioned underneath the front bay window, was covered in shards of glass from the explosion. He took the safer armchair, leaving the two of them standing on the other side of the coffee table. He folded his hands in his lap.

“We’re in Maine,” he repeated, and he looked at Melinda.

“Agent Romanoff received indication that Shostakov had left New York. We pursued the lead.”

“Have you found Shostakov?” Coulson asked. 

“No, Sir. Last night we had a run-in with two people working for Shostakov but we haven’t yet encountered the man himself,” Melinda explained.

Coulson nodded and switched to looking at Romanoff. “I need you to understand how this looks,” he said.

“I know how it looks, Sir,” Romanoff said. She didn’t sound anything but detached, indifferent to the whole situation, and Melinda looked at her out of the corner of her eye. 

Coulson bowed his head and looked at his hands when he started speaking again. “We’re putting this op on hold for now. We may pass it to a different set of agents.” Romanoff tensed, and Coulson looked back up at them. “You’ll be debriefed, of course.”

“The job hasn’t been completed,” Romanoff protested. 

“In light of more information S.H.I.E.L.D. has obtained, it’s been determined that you are too close to this, Agent Romanoff. And I believe your objection proves that.”

Romanoff did react beyond cool detachment at that—she glanced to the floor. A tiny motion, and she went right back to staring at a spot beyond Coulson’s head after she did it, but if Coulson had doubted whatever intel had been telling him up to now, he didn’t after that motion. Melinda could see it in his face.

“There’s a chopper coming to escort the two of you back to HQ in New York. We’ll continue this discussion there. Pack your bags,” Coulson said, and rose.

“Sir,” they said at once. 

“Agent May. Stay for a moment.”

Melinda paused in her turn to leave. She caught the glance Romanoff sent her way, a brief worried one, before the redhead continued on her way and left her and Coulson alone.

“What’s going on, Melinda?” He’d dropped his Agent Coulson voice enough that she relaxed and scrubbed her hands across her face.

“A job gone to shit that we should’ve walked away from when the Red Guardian left New York,” she said. Coulson stood, looking contemplative. 

“We should’ve pulled the plug on this days ago,” Coulson admitted. “The car blowing was the deciding factor, but we should’ve pulled it as soon as…” 

“You found out they’d been married.”

“She told you?” he looked surprised. 

“Completely out of the blue on the way out here,” Melinda said. 

Coulson sighed, a distressed look creasing his brow and worry in his eyes. “None of this looks good on her.”

“I kept telling you that, Phil.” Melinda sighed. “But she’s not helping him.”

“You’ll go on the record in her defence? It would help her case.”

“Are you building one?” Melinda asked, her eyebrow sliding up.

“If it goes to court-martial I’ll be defending her, but I’d like to keep it from getting that far.”

“This safe house doesn’t look good, I know,” Melinda said. “She didn’t tell me when she acquired it, but I don’t think she’s the type to trust anyone else with its location.”

“Unless it isn’t entirely hers,” Coulson said. 

That was a good point, and one that Melinda hadn’t necessarily considered. Could Romanoff have blown the car up herself? It didn’t seem likely, not from everything Melinda had seen, but it still existed in the realm of possibility. After all, Romanoff had been dictating this whole venture.

Coulson was right. They should’ve pulled the plug on the op before it got this far.

The sound of a helicopter landing broke through the noise of the techs outside, and the curtains started billowing inward without the window glass to stop the wind that whipped up as it landed on the street outside. 

“I want to finish this!” Coulson shouted over the noise.

Melinda only nodded.

 

xviii.

With her Maine house known by May, S.H.I.E.L.D., and probably Alexei, it no longer fell anywhere near the realm of ‘safe’. Just as well that she’d never kept anything here—Maine was out of the way and not a place she had to go to often. The lack of equipment in the house was a blessing now as much as it had been a curse when she’d needed tools for this job and hadn’t had them at hand.

She could repair the windows and sell the house, put the money away in a rainy day fund. After all, a storm hung heavily on her horizon.

Natasha didn’t like being pulled off the job before it was done. She didn’t like Coulson knowing more information than she’d given him—didn’t like that her S.H.I.E.L.D. file would have those bits of information about her past that she was still pulling together herself. 

But mostly, Natasha didn’t want a name connected to her past to be printed black and white in her file and belong to someone who was still living. And her ability to do anything about it had turned to sand in her fingers.

She’d wished for the mission to come to an end so that her period of remaining in close quarters with Melinda May—who had soft, sure hands—would be over. She hadn’t wanted that to come to pass this way. Hadn’t imagined that it would come to pass this way. And why should she have thought that S.H.I.E.L.D. would interfere on a black op?

_‘Be careful what you wish for, Natasha.’_

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.


	10. Chapter 10

xix. 

“Is your name Melinda May?”

“Yes.” Melinda stared at the blank wall ahead of her, the nodes of the polygraph pressing uncomfortably against her skin and pinching her fingers.

“Is your date of birth November 20, 1965?”

S.H.I.E.L.D. was taking their jaunt to Maine worse than Coulson had implied. A lot worse.

“Yes.”

“A reminder, Agent May, that S.H.I.E.L.D.-taught resistance techniques are not permitted during the polygraph, and that attempting to use them will not be effective, regardless.”

“I’m aware,” Melinda intoned, her voice matching the drone of Agent Bahar who was issuing the polygraph.

“On May 21st…”

The session went on. And on. Question after question about Romanoff and Shostakov. A couple about Coulson. Even one or two about Clint Barton, for as much interaction with him as she ever had. 

The current running through the line of questioning didn’t carry any hint of real threat to Melinda. She wouldn’t be surprised, though, if Natasha Romanoff had already found her way back into a cell.

It would be a cell on base, of course, because she had to be questioned as well. Melinda hoped she was wrong. Coulson had strings he could pull, but given Romanoff’s past, she may have had the advantage of too many of those strings already.

At the end of the nearly three-hour session, Bahar dismissed Melinda to look over the results. He would compare the charts and her responses to a videotape of the entire session before submitting the results. Melinda headed straight to her quarters, where she fell asleep almost as soon as she’d changed into more comfortable clothes.

 

A knock woke her forty-five minutes later. Melinda got up to answer the door, if only because she hadn’t intended on falling asleep in the first place and because she could only think of two people who had any reason to be on the other side of that door.

Natasha Romanoff stood there, hair falling in loose curls around her shoulders and looking fresh and not at all like she’d been in as many meetings as Melinda knew she had been. Nothing in her stance suggested her freedom had been at risk—or even that it was still. It was arrogant, yes, but in Romanoff it displayed a certain resilience, too, and that was an attractive quality.

“Agent Romanoff,” she greeted. “Nice to see you aren’t back at the Raft.” Melinda kept her body blocking what doorway space there was with the door only open a crack.

“I’ve spent most of the time in meetings since getting back, making sure that didn’t happen,” Romanoff said. Melinda picked up a tightness to her features that, if she was reading Romanoff right, suggested it had been close. “Coulson, Director Fury, various agents with polygraphs.” Her expression at the end, one that was quite open, told Melinda just how accurate the readings on those polygraph results were going to be.

“Why are you here, Agent Romanoff?” Melinda asked. “I’ve already given my statements,” she added.

“I know. May I?” She angled her head toward the room. 

“No,” Melinda said.

A momentary taken aback look flitted across and interrupted the indifference on Romanoff’s face. She nodded, a little too gracious, accepting and eager, for Melinda’s liking.

“I’ll be quick,” Romanoff said. 

Melinda made a gesture for her to get on with it. Romanoff took a shallow breath, like she was bracing herself for what she was about to say.

“I wanted to apologize for dragging you into my problems,” Romanoff said. “And to thank you for approaching the situation as a professional, even when I committed the transgressions against protocol that landed us here.”

Melinda held back her sigh. The humility was new, and Romanoff wore an earnest expression that told her it was genuine—or she was trying to play Melinda again, and Melinda wouldn’t put that past her. Even having missed her goal and been pulled off of the mission didn’t seem to have put a damper on Romanoff’s need to play chess master. Melinda didn’t quite know what piece she was meant to represent, but she still felt like she stood, in play, in the middle of a board.

And she was definitely done with that role.

“I was doing my job, Agent Romanoff. Excuse me.”

She shut the door before Romanoff could object, even in spite of the distressed look she caught a glimpse of as the door closed, and turned and leaned back against it with her eyes closed. Shaking her head, she crossed to the mirror and gave her reflection a good, hard look. 

Natasha Romanoff wasn’t only beautiful. Melinda had seen her be sure of herself, and vulnerable and proud and now humble and maybe almost nervous, and it was throwing her all out of whack.

“The humility was an act,” she said to it. “You’re too old for this.”

Then she ran a brush through her hair to get rid of the sleep-mussed look she sported and went to find Coulson.

 

There were five French fries left in the basket she’d ordered and as Phil approached the table she dragged one through the remnants of the garlic mayo dip, scraping the sides of the little plastic container to pick up as much as possible. Phil lifted an eyebrow when he sat down, but heeded her raised hand and waited until she’d finished the rest of the fries before he spoke.

“Something wrong?” he asked, and the words definitely meant ‘That doesn’t fit into your diet’ and ‘Why didn’t you wait for me’ all at once.

He also made it sound like he knew exactly why she’d wanted to meet up with him here, in Dale’s bar, way the hell away from their usual S.H.I.E.L.D.-frequented haunt. She didn’t think he did, but she also hadn’t dismissed it entirely.

Melinda took a deep breath and a moment to wonder why she’d decided to admit this to Coulson instead of the woman in question, and then said, “I’ve developed feelings for Natasha Romanoff.” 

It was absolutely her empty beer glass’ fault that she’d been that blunt.

Her stomach churned when Phil flagged a server down and ordered himself a drink and her a refill before he replied. 

“Regulation dictates that, unless she’s promoted to the same clearance level as you are, you cannot be involved on base. What you do off base, however, is your own business.”

“I didn’t say I was going to act on it,” she pointed out, incredulous. 

Phil smiled, the son of a bitch actually smiled, and he made a motion with his eyes that took in the bar. “Were you hoping to run into her here?” he teased.

She didn’t stand up and storm out, but the only reason for _that_ was because their server was coming back over with their beers and she would’ve run him down if she did. 

“No,” she snapped. And she didn’t know why the hell she was getting so flustered over this. It was a stupid little crush on the bad girl, of all types, and she was a grown woman.

Phil sipped his beer. “Did something happen between you in Maine?”

“We were working.”

“You were in a house together for the better part of 72 hours.”

“Working,” Melinda repeated.

Phil put his beer down and stared at her. She met his gaze, the staring contest going on until he snorted and blinked. “So what happened?”

“She was focused and as professional as possible, despite the fact that she shouldn’t have been on the job because it was too personal, and—“

“I’ve heard your report. That’s not what I asked,” Phil interrupted.

“I’m getting there,” she snapped. “She came to apologize to me this afternoon. She’s self-aware and…” she sighed. “She let me bandage up her arm when she got shot. Let me see her vulnerable. She trusts me, and she shouldn’t.”

“Ah,” Phil said.

Melinda glared at him. “’Ah?’ That’s it?”

“You’ve already said you weren’t going to act on it. What else do you need from me?”

She had, but he didn’t have to be an ass about it. “I still feel like she’s playing me, Phil. I can’t act on it.”

The humour he’d been wearing at her expense evaporated from the lines of his face, expression turning serious and contemplative. “It’s certainly her M.O.,” he said. “But you’ve changed your tune about her, for the most part.”

She had. She knew that. “She’s on our side, or at least her interpretation of it. She isn’t selling us out to Russia, I know that at least.”

But she was still Trouble, with a capital ‘T’, even if the only person she was causing problems for was Melinda.

Coulson looked smug. “You should talk to Natasha about this.”

That was another thing, that maybe she shouldn’t mention to Coulson with him already wearing that expression, but what the hell. “She asked me to call her by her first name. When we were in Maine.”

Phil grinned. “You should definitely talk to Natasha about this. And maybe stop calling her Agent Romanoff if she asked you to.”

“Maybe,” Melinda muttered, and dropped the subject. She refused to engage with Phil on the topic for the rest of the evening, even when he hinted he might want to bring it back up. She was confused, to be truthful, because damn was it tempting to act on her feelings when she was fairly certain that Romanoff felt the same way. There was almost no risk, except that the woman herself was the risk. 

For all Melinda knew, Romanoff had decided to seduce her for reasons concerning her own ends.

It was certainly working if that was the case.

 

xx.

Natasha had been explicitly ordered to drop all attempts to track down the Red Guardian. She had been 100% removed from the op as of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s escorting herself and May back to HQ from Maine. For a couple of days, that had been fine. Natasha had had to focus all of her attention on ensuring that her Commanding Officers in no way thought she had anything to do with Alexei escaping, or the car blowing up, or any of it. It helped that Coulson was on her side, and that Melinda’s statements had backed up her story. It helped that Natasha was completely innocent and hadn’t been having to convince S.H.I.E.L.D. of a lie.

All that she’d wanted to do, really, was thank Melinda for giving her the benefit of the doubt, even in the face of it all. She knew, knew, that she’d done a lot of questionable things, disappeared a lot when they had been out in Maine, and still May had presented the job with Natasha in a positive light.

“You know I haven’t been allowed to see you for three days? What the fuck, Tash.” Barton barged into the room. She knew he’d been coming, or else the door would have been locked, but all the same. She glared up at him.

“Knock,” she said.

He took two steps back and gave her a sarcastic look when he rapped on the doorframe.

She told him what had happened. Every goddamn thing, down to Melinda May bandaging up her arm. At the end of it all she sighed and, unable to look at him, muttered, “I’m attracted to her.”

“She’s an attractive woman,” he said, and dropped down on the bed next to her. “Not my type, but…”

“I know what your type is,” Natasha said, giving him a little smile. He nudged her with his shoulder. 

“I’m still pissed at you for cutting me out, Natasha.”

“I know,” she replied. The information, everything that had happened thus far, didn’t concern him even now, but she didn’t say that. She didn’t say that, because she hadn’t even told him that she was leaving on a dangerous black op, not really, and now that she was back, she didn’t know how to tell him that it wasn’t over yet.

She was sure that he knew, though. The look he was giving her, the way he was weighing her in his eyes, told her that he knew.

“So, Melinda May,” he said, instead of asking after Alexei, or Russia, or their mission in Kiev.

Her face felt hot and he grinned.

“You’re blushing.”

“It’s embarrassing,” she snapped. “And you may not say anything to her,” she warned, dropping her voice.

He raised his hands, held them up as if to show he wasn’t armed. “Hey, I like my balls where they are.”

She glowered at him. “More than that would be in danger,” she ground out. 

If she was going to communicate her interest to Melinda May, it was going to be on her own terms. And it was also going to have to wait until Alexei was dealt with, because getting rid of him was what was important now. Not the intrusion of her feelings.

Clint threw his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him in a hug that she sighed into, staring down at her lap the entire time.


	11. Chapter 11

xxi.

Romanoff didn’t make any further unannounced stops by Melinda’s room for the rest of the week (thankfully) and neither did Melinda hear a word in regard to the Red Guardian op or their Maine excursion. It hadn’t been swept under the rug, filed or forgotten, it was too soon after for that, but the files would be with the higher-ups and she and Romanoff might never hear anything about the status of the mission again.

She was in the middle of checking through her duffel bag and suiting up to fly out to Croatia when someone banged on the door. Melinda rolled her eyes to look at the ceiling and sighed. No one had cause to come and visit her in her quarters. Even Coulson preferred to find her at her desk or at the range when he knew she was on and aware and working and that he wouldn’t be interrupting her during downtime.

She stared long and hard at the door after the knocking stopped, then returned to making sure her ammo was properly stored. Another rap came at the door when the person on the other side didn’t take the hint. She sighed, rolled her eyes and crossed the room.

“Yes?” she asked before she’d even fully yanked open the door. She snapped to attention when it was opened wide enough to reveal the woman on the other side.

“Commander Hill,” Melinda said.

Hill wore her dark hair in a bun at the base of her neck and an expression that was far from amused. She stood with her arms crossed, one hand holding a thin folder at her side.

Melinda clamped down on the sigh threatening to pass between her lips. She could guess what this was about.

“You’re not going to Croatia,” Hill said without preamble. “We’ve gained a lead on the Red Guardian. You’re going back in with Romanoff and we’ll be monitoring the op this time.”

“That’s a calling card,” Melinda said.

“They know Romanoff is with S.H.I.E.L.D. We’re not hiding anymore,” she passed the folder to Melinda. “Briefing in fifteen.”

“Sir,” Melinda said, and closed the door after Hill turned on her heel and walked away. She leaned back against the closed door and groaned, gazing across the room at the duffel bag sitting on the bed and waiting to leave for Croatia. If she’d only been set to leave half an hour earlier.

 

The Command room, when Melinda arrived, was notable in how empty it was. Absent were the analysts and sci-ops agents usually present for an op of this level. Romanoff hadn't arrived yet, though Melinda assumed she had been pulled in on this meeting as well, if she was going in.

Distracted by the figures and diagrams displayed in clusters on the monitors on the wall, Melinda nodded to Commander Hill and then to Coulson. 

The flashing points on the monitor highlighted two different locations on the east coast, one in Georgia and the other in Maryland. Melinda frowned at the display, her toes tapping an impatient pattern inside her shoe.

"Shostakov's resurfaced in Maryland. His people are based in Georgia, as far as we've been able to tell," Coulson said, also turning to look at the screen. "We have his location locked down to two square miles. He won't get away this time."

Beyond both being on the east coast, Melinda couldn't see anything that tied those two locations together. "Is Shostakov still the target, or are we cleaning out his support system first?" she asked.

 

“The Red Guardian remains the primary target,” Coulson said. “You’ll be on the ground in Maryland.”

Melinda raised an eyebrow. “We’re doing this without Romanoff?” she asked.

Coulson and Hill shared a look, and Coulson clasped his hands in front of him and shook his head. “Agent Romanoff is already on the ground. You’ll rendezvous with her there. We sent her in yesterday evening.”

“She’s too close to this, Sir,” Melinda protested. “Is someone on the ground with her running backend?”

Coulson shook his head again. Melinda scowled and told herself that her outrage was borne of questionable ethics and choices on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s part and not the dread clenching her stomach.

Hill crossed her arms and stepped to the centre of the room. “Director Fury looked at the results of the investigation into the operation in Maine. Congratulations, Agent May, it was determined that you each did everything in your power, given the circumstances, to conduct the mission according to S.H.I.E.L.D. protocols.”

Fury had a soft spot for Romanoff, apparently, because regardless of how she and Romanoff might have made it sound during the investigation, that hadn’t been the case. And to send her off into the field alone to do it all over again, this time with no backup, didn’t look good to Melinda either. She wouldn’t doubt that Romanoff had made that happen. She didn’t look forward to what she was going to find on the ground when she got there.

“You said we were going in with comms this time. Who’s running backend?”

“I am,” Coulson said. 

That was comforting, at least. She trusted Coulson in her ear, and she trusted that he’d built some rapport with Romanoff, enough that she hoped Romanoff put trust in him. Enough rapport to stop her from doing something stupid in the field. 

Though given that Romanoff had already been in the field alone, it might be too late for that.

“We depart in half an hour,” Coulson said. “Dismissed.”

 

They arrived on the ground in Maryland roughly 24 hours after Romanoff, and met her at the motel S.H.I.E.L.D. was putting them up in, a nice enough place to setup base and within 10 miles of where Shostakov was holed up.

“You saw him?” Coulson asked, sitting in the lone chair in the room Romanoff had been using—re-designated as the room Melinda and Romanoff would be sharing, with Coulson in the smaller one next door. There were two single beds, and Melinda perched on the end of one while Romanoff was sitting on the other.

“From a distance, too far to get a shot.”

“You’re sure it was him?” Melinda asked.

“I’m sure.” Romanoff’s eyes were steely when she replied. Her expression since they’d joined her had been cold and shut off. Utterly on her game, with none of the flashes of Natasha’s personality that Melinda had seen when they’d been on the mission alone. Too hard to tell if the focus was due to Coulson’s presence, or if it was because this had been going on too long and she was beyond the point of patience with it.

Melinda suspected it was a little of both, but she hoped, for the sake of the mission, that it was the former. Romanoff was too damn invested to get distracted on top of it. 

“Does he know you saw him?”

“No,” Romanoff said. Then amended, “Not to my knowledge. He seems to be working alone. I don’t know to what extent the cell in Georgia is supporting him.”

“We have people working on that,” Coulson said. “That’s why I’m here. Are you prepared to go into the active phase of the operation tonight or would it benefit us strategically to wait until early tomorrow?”

“Tonight,” Romanoff said at once. 

Coulson gave her a long look. 

“The longer we’re gathered here, especially with communications, the more likely Alexei will discover us and escape. Or come looking for us,” Romanoff said. “Our _only_ strategic advantage is moving tonight.”

Coulson nodded, conceding, and turned his attention to Melinda. “You’re comfortable with this?”

“I trust Agent Romanoff to have correctly assessed the situation,” she replied. Coulson narrowed his eyes a fraction, as though questioning her judgment in light of their last conversation at the bar. 

She never should have said anything. Not if it was just going to impair his professional opinion of her now.

“Then we move tonight,” Coulson said after Melinda had held his gaze for a moment longer. 

If Romanoff had noticed what passed between them, she ignored it in favour of crossing to her bag and starting to arm herself, a small arsenal coming out of her bag and being strapped to her body. Her features were still cold, focused on the task at hand. If she cared about the interpersonal currents here, she wasn’t worrying about them.

Then again, she had enough personal issues going in here, whether she wanted to pretend that their going up against Shostakov wasn’t affecting her that way or not. Melinda couldn’t pretend to be able to read Romanoff, at least not well, but she _had_ changed, _was_ behaving differently. She was trying to be professional, absolutely professional, but she was too damn tied up in it all.

Natasha shouldn’t have been put back on this op, and everyone in the room knew it.

“Be ready in ten,” Coulson said, and exited the room to leave them to their preparations.

Melinda slipped into the adjoining bathroom to change into her field suit. When she came back out, Natasha was putting in her earpiece, standing near the door and tense enough that it telegraphed her impatience to leave. 

Concerned that Romanoff’s state of mind had moved beyond productive focus and into the realm of obsession, and thus, distraction, Melinda crossed her arms. 

“What are Shostakov’s resources like here?” she asked. Focus on the particulars of the job, not on the bigger picture. The little details and not the individual behind them. Treat it like anything else, like there are no personal stakes.

“He’s been set up here at least since we left Maine. Too much lead-time. If we give him the chance to get the jump on us, we are dead.”

“Then we get him tonight,” Melinda said. Finding her own earpiece on the table, she placed it into her ear, heading the buzz of static and soft beep as it calibrated.

_“Three,”_ Coulson said in her ear, signals on his end letting him know they were both online. Melinda raised her eyebrows at Natasha; a silent request for assurance, ensuring her partner was ready to step out into the field. One go. That was all they had left.

Natasha closed her eyes and Melinda watched her breathe in and out, grounding herself, before she met Melinda’s gaze again and nodded.

“We’re ready,” Melinda said. 

_“I have you on the monitors. Signals are strong. Remember that your goal is the elimination of the target.”_

“Copy,” she and Romanoff said as one.

 

xxii.

Natasha had a reputation; one that had both protected her and kept her employed for all of her time before S.H.I.E.L.D. A reputation that had also made her enemies; dangerous enemies, ones who wanted her dead not only because of her having gotten the better of them, but also for the infamy it would bring them, being someone who had killed a Black Widow.

Alexei didn’t want the fame. He was following orders. Tying up loose ends. Sent out by some sick general who didn’t really care about the outcome and only wanted to see one of them destroy the other. 

Maybe it was cocky, belligerent, but Natasha refused to die by Alexei’s hand. Refused to die today, when she still had so much weighing on her conscience, when she’d finally found a place in the world where she could do some good, find a little balance for what was left of her soul.

And, more than a little, she held a newfound awareness that she _wanted_ something. Something more than survival. A seed had planted and found root inside her mind that hinted at happiness, something out of bounds to her before, something she’d scarcely even considered before S.H.I.E.L.D.

The feelings she’d developed for May were dangerous. Not because she was worried about rejection, or that she might cling to unreturned feelings, but because those feelings—if they were returned, if she acted on them—were the greatest weakness she could think of.

And one of the ways Natasha had gotten as far as she had was by keeping her weak points close and under wraps, even as she owned her feelings and herself. Keeping that balance, in a structure like S.H.I.E.L.D.’s, and now working in close proximity to Melinda… that was difficult. That was distracting. And the last thing she could afford to be right now was distracted.

_“Pull over. Leave the car. You need to walk from here, some sort of security system’s been set up around the perimeter,”_ Coulson said through their comms. Melinda pulled the car over and they got out, Natasha looking up and down the road. 

They hadn’t been followed. It was remote out here. They were in the clear.

For now.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The graphic depiction of violence warning is for this chapter. It's one line at the very end, with a description of a bullet impacting a skull.

xxiii.

Natasha had been monitoring a plaza about half a mile out from the house S.H.I.E.L.D.’s aerial views had locked on as being Shostakov’s base when she spotted the man the night prior. According to her report, he was driving around in a small, non-descript black sports car and going out of his way to keep from drawing attention to himself. Out of his way, which meant that he stood out to those looking for him.

Coulson instructed them to leave the car in the same plaza where Natasha had spied Shostakov. Melinda’d pulled it up behind the strip mall, leaving it next to a dumpster and mostly out of sight. Everything in the mall was already closed for the evening, being almost in the middle of nowhere, and a car in the front lot, with all the lights out in the building, would draw more attention than they wanted.

They kept to the edge of the road as much as possible. The sun hadn’t quite set yet, giving them plenty of time and light before they needed to worry about the sparse spacing of the streetlights overhead. Rural roads were good for keeping civilians and bystanders from interfering with missions. They weren’t so good for tactical advantage when the terrain wasn’t familiar.

_“Due north. There’s a ravine you can cut through and a back acre of property that will come up closer to the house,”_ Coulson said in her ear. Romanoff turned that way, crossing the road without a glance for any oncoming traffic. She hadn’t spoken since before they’d left the motel, not to check in, not to make a game plan, nothing, instead listening to the dialogue between Melinda and Coulson without any input of her own.

Melinda didn’t have a great feeling about the silence.

“Ro—Natasha,” she called. She caught up to Romanoff in the little jog she took to get down into the treed area that surrounded the road. Natasha didn’t slow, or look around to acknowledge that Melinda had addressed her, but she made a noise in her throat. “You need to tell me what you’re planning,” she said. She left the _‘I won’t stand for you taking off on me,’_ unsaid and hoped it was implied.

“I’m planning on completing our task,” Romanoff said without inflection. 

Against her better instincts, Melinda grabbed at the other woman’s elbow. Romanoff turned toward her but didn’t jump, or spin, or otherwise show that she might have been surprised by the contact. There was an impatient cast to the blank focus on her features. This close, even in the dying light, her eyes were very, very green. 

“At what cost?” Melinda asked.

A brief furrow of Romanoff’s brow. “I’ve told you before that whatever affections I had toward Alexei in the past are gone,” she said. “He is after _me_ Agent May. This is a task I would have taken on even if S.H.I.E.L.D. had never gotten involved.”

Coulson cleared his throat in their ears. _“This is being recorded,”_ he reminded them. 

Romanoff pressed her lips together and Melinda dropped her hand from her elbow. 

_“Continue north. You’re still alone for now.”_

“Do you have heat signatures on the house?” Natasha asked, turning away from Melinda with a look she couldn’t interpret—talk later?—and starting through the trees again.

_“We have one. We’re operating under the assumption that it’s our target.”_

“10-4,” Natasha replied. 

At least she was communicating with them again, and Melinda had at least an inkling more of an idea of just what was going through the woman’s head. That inkling would have to do for now. When it was all over, when they made it back to the motel and could have a personal conversation and keep it off the record, then they could revisit this. Then and only then. Coulson had been right to interrupt them, even if it kept Melinda from answers she was sure she needed.

_“The property border is ten feet in front of you. Is there a fence?”_

“Yes,” Melinda said when they closed the distance to it, standing far enough back to keep from being struck in case it was electrified. The tell-tale hum was absent, woods as quiet as they had been, and the fence looked like simple chain-link, lacking even barbed wire around the top. They could scale it, no problem. Melinda hadn’t been expecting to find an expansive compound in these woods, satellite imaging hadn’t shown them that, but she had been expecting a little more security than this.

“I’m disappointed,” she commented. Natasha gave a hint of a smile.

_“Follow the fence north-east. There’s a point where it comes in closer to the house. That’s where you’ll go over,”_ Coulson said, ignoring Melinda’s comment. 

Acknowledging the order, they continued on that way, keeping a few feet back from the fence but following it all the same, and watching the property beyond for the house to loom up out of the darkness.

“There,” Natasha said a few minutes later. She pointed at a mass amongst the trees, dark and almost detail-less save for the yellow brightness of light emitting from an upstairs window. 

_“Five feet to your left, Agent Romanoff, is your best bet,”_ Coulson said.

Natasha approached the fence, not touching it for a moment in favour of leaning in close and listening. 

“It’s safe,” she said, slipping her fingers between the chains and ascending with sure steps. 

Melinda bent to study the ground through the fence before following. “What for the rabbit hole by your left foot,” she said.

Romanoff jumped as soon as she cleared the top of the fence, pushing off and landing without even a grunt three feet clear of fence and rabbit hole. Melinda followed in the same motion, adrenaline spiking the moment her feet hit the ground.

_“Shostakov is in the—“_

“West upstairs back bedroom,” Natasha interrupted. “Unless he’s living in the dark.”

_“Correct,”_ Coulson said. Melinda pressed her lips together to hide the curve of her smile. 

She sobered quickly enough. There should have been a sniper on this job. If Barton were backing Romanoff instead of herself, Shostakov would have been eliminated by now. S.H.I.E.L.D. usually sent the best in for the job but, regardless of what they might give as reasoning, they’d hit shy of the mark this time.

“Any special instructions?” Melinda asked. 

Natasha raised an eyebrow in an expression of impatient disbelief. Melinda kept her face patient and blank in response.

_“Keep together and in contact. Remember you have strength in numbers but be prepared for the house to be against you.”_

“Copy,” Melinda said. She hadn’t completed her gesture for Natasha to lead the way before she was staring at a red ponytail, its wearer disappearing into the thinning trees.

Melinda caught up in a few broad strides and with another couple steps took the lead. When Natasha didn’t push in front of her like she’d expected, she picked a spot out of view of the upstairs windows and stopped dead.

“Yes,” Natasha said, tone more than a little irritated and a perfect response to Melinda’s unasked, barely formed question. However personal this was for her, Natasha Romanoff was a professional. Melinda needed to remember that. 

Melinda nodded. “Does he know we’re coming?”

“Approach as though he doesn’t, prepare to react as though he does,” she said.

Covert ops 101. Behave as though the mission wasn’t going to go to shit until it did. Then try to save it or get the hell out. The calls were easier to make when there was someone running backend, particularly someone as collected and sure in the calls he made as Coulson.

_“Don’t antagonize the target. Neutralize as quickly as possible in case he calls for backup.”_

“We’ve got it, Coulson,” Romanoff said. 

They stood at the edge of the yard now. The property was well laid out, though unmaintained. Tall, weedy grass covered the distance from where they stood in the wooded area to a flagstone patio that came out ten feet from double French doors. A section of it was covered, forming an outdoor, summer room with barbeque and dining area. An in-ground pool butted against the edge of the patio, off to the left.

Natasha held binoculars to her eyes, watching the lit window. “Clear,” she said. 

Melinda made a quick, careful arc around the yard, finishing on the covered part of the patio and out of sight of the windows above. Natasha followed a moment later.

“Coulson?” Melinda said.

_“He’s still in the upstairs bedroom. May, through the house. Romanoff, up, but make sure May’s in position before you move.”_

Melinda tested the handles on the French doors, finding both locked tight. Wary of their element of surprise, she bent down on one knee and picked the lock. Holding the handle half depressed, she nodded to Romanoff to signal her readiness.

Romanoff returned the nod and lifted one arm. She flicked her wrist and a hook shot from a section on her bracelet, finding purchase somewhere on the roof above with a rough scraping noise.

“Move,” Romanoff said, and grabbed onto the cord as it began to retract and pull her into the air.

Melinda crossed into the house once Romanoff’s feet were out of sight, bracing herself for an alarm that never sounded. There wasn’t even the beeping of a security system signalling a door had opened. Her first two steps deeper into the kitchen, with its white tile floor, stainless steel appliances and marble countertops, were tentative, in case the sensor was delayed.

_“Through the dining room and to the right will get you to the stairs,”_ Coulson said.

Melinda followed the direction, keeping to the edge of the counter and listening for noise from above. Shostakov didn’t seem to be moving around. There were no footsteps. Sitting at a computer, maybe, or otherwise occupied. As long as he was in a good position for Natasha at the window, it didn’t matter what he was doing.

_“In position,”_ Romanoff said, voice as smooth over the radio feed as it had been when she’d been standing next to Melinda. 

_“Hold,”_ Coulson said. 

At the base of the staircase now, and in a hall so dark the stairs were mere dark shapes rising toward the ceiling with streaks of lighter gray where the risers were painted white, Melinda found the rail and placed one hand on it. Guiding herself with careful footsteps, wary of any creaky stairs, she ascended toward the cast of incandescent light from the room Shostakov was in.

_"May's in position."_

She didn't have eyes on the target, but close enough. She could hear him shuffling around, close to the door, and she ducked into the room adjacent to Shostakov's. It was a bathroom, with personal effects she doubted belonged to the military man inhabiting the house. A Disney princess shower curtain and the small pink hairbrush on the counter betrayed the ownership of this house as being other than the current resident. They could find out what had happened to the owners later—there hadn't been any sign of a struggle on her way through the house, maybe they were on vacation.

One could only hope, anyway.

 _"I have the shot, I'm taking it,"_ Romanoff said.

_“Fire at will, Agent Romanoff,”_ Coulson said at the same time as Melinda heard glass shatter. The sound came to her ears both through the wall to the other room as an immediate crash and, with a fraction of a moment’s delay, from her earpiece. The cascading noise disoriented her long enough that Romanoff’s cursing in her ear didn’t register until the return shots started.

_“Romanoff—“_

“Missed the shot,” Melinda growled. Without waiting for further word from Coulson, she double-checked her sidearm and joined the confrontation. Between Romanoff’s initial shot and Melinda crossing the office threshold, five more _pops_ sounded.

 

xxiv.

Natasha understood that her taking the lead on this op ran completely contrary to Coulson’s better judgment. She owed him. She owed him for far more than this goddamned op. Hitting Alexei in the shoulder and barely injuring him instead of making the first shot a kill shot wasn’t how she’d planned on starting to repay that debt.

The bullet shattered the window; its point-blank range sent spidery cracks crawling out from where it had passed through. Tiny bits of glass rained down, inside the room and out onto the patio below, only a fraction of the window left clinging to the edges of the frame. Natasha swung herself up and out of the way, grabbing onto the edge of the roof with one hand and crawling up onto the shingles, out of view of the window and bullet trajectory.

Natasha heard two consecutive pops of Alexei returning fire and peered over the edge of the roof. Hyper extending to angle her arm at the window, she fired twice again before withdrawing.

The next return shot came straight up, defying gravity for long moments before it plummeted straight back down.

In her ear May and Coulson were saying something, but it wasn’t directed at Natasha and she tuned it out. Lying flat on the roof, or as flat as she could be at this angle, Natasha peered over the gutter.

Alexei leapt from the window, landing with a _thump_ on his feet on the flat roof of the covered porch. Natasha pulled her head back and out of sight, listening, and after a moment heard another _thump_ of his landing on the flagstone below.

“He’s running,” she said.

_“I’m looking at the last activity on his computer and he may have called in reinforcements,”_ May said. 

Checking where her grappling hook still clung to the edge of the roof, Natasha rappelled down to the ground. 

“I’m giving chase, I still have him in my sight,” she said, and she knew Coulson would be able to tell from the infrared view and darkness that she was lying, but May wouldn’t. 

_“Wait for Agent May—“_

_“No. Don’t lose him. I’ll catch up.”_

There was a moment’s hesitation from Coulson before he said, _“He’s around the front of the house. Running down the driveway instead of through the trees. It’s open, be careful.”_

Natasha was already moving, skirting the gardens surrounding the house as closely as she could, the thorns of one rose bush pulling at her suit when she leapt over it. 

“He left the car here,” she said as she ran past it. “See if you can find the keys. It’ll give us an advantage.”

_“20 yards,”_ Coulson said.

“Guide me into line behind him,” Natasha said, speeding up.

_“Three feet to your left.”_

She shifted over, paused in her run long enough to raise her gun steady, and fired into the wall of darkness ahead of her. The sound of return fire prompted her to run in a jagged arc to keep out of the line of fire.

_“25 yards. Two and a half feet to your right.”_

Natasha adjusted and fired again. Her blind bullet found its target, and a shout and grunt came from in front of her, giving her a sound to aim at. Natasha pulled the trigger twice more, dropping to her knees in case of return fire. The sound of metal hitting gravel reached her ears when Alexei dropped his gun.

Rising again, Natasha flicked on her flashlight. Alexei had fallen closer than the sound had suggested, maybe 10 yards from her. He lay reaching for his dropped firearm, cradling an arm that trailed blood in two different spots.

She kicked the gun from his reach as his fingers grazed it, holding her own gun with the barrel trained on his head.

“Natalia,” he whispered, and whether memories were fabricated and planted or real, he looked the way she remembered, unaltered by age. Auburn hair still fell across his eyes, blue and wincing away from the light shining from the flashlight. 

She pulled the trigger before he could say anything else, closing her eyes against the spray of blood and wet splattering sound as the bullet broke through the back of his skull.

“It’s done,” she rasped, breath coming all of a sudden in sharp pants as her lungs caught up with her having stopped breathing altogether.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do they give out awards for "most implausible gun fight"?


	13. Chapter 13

xxv.

Coulson was absolutely the officer in charge of the op, and Melinda shouldn’t have overridden him when Romanoff said she was chasing after Shostakov. Coulson, of any of the handlers she’d worked with in her time at S.H.I.E.L.D., was best at taking guidance from the agents on the ground, and handing over the reins of the op when need arose. Not needing to take blind control was a good trait for a handler to have. Even in this instance. Maybe especially in this instance. The target had been brought down and Romanoff’s use of the infrared views Coulson had had been _impressive_.

And Melinda hadn’t really needed Romanoff to wait for her. They would have lost Shostakov. They wouldn’t be on cleanup now.

Natasha wouldn’t be standing like the proverbial deer in her headlights now, blinking into the light with still-damp spots of blood spray scattered across her cheeks. Her chest heaved, matching the quick bursts of breath coming through the feed in Melinda’s ear.

“Natasha?” she asked, still sitting in the car. The redhead still had her firearm in hand, and with no way of knowing her state of mind, Melinda wasn’t about to get out and risk the barrel being turned on her. A friendly fire fight wasn’t on the agenda for tonight.

Prompted by her voice, Melinda watched Natasha snap herself back together.

 _"Is cleanup on the way?"_ Natasha asked. 

_"Ten minutes out. We'll have the body brought back to S.H.I.E.L.D. Clear out and come back to the motel."_

Natasha nodded, apparently to herself, and slid her sidearm into its holster on her thigh. After fiddling with something on her bracelets for a moment that made them briefly light up with a piercing, electric blue glow, she turned and walked back to the car. Leaving her door open, Melinda slipped from the driver's side and met Natasha in the glare of the headlights before she could step around to the passenger's side.

"You can drive," Natasha said, sounding distracted. 

"I appreciate the concession," Melinda said dryly, "But I was going to check the body."

Natasha made a noise of acknowledgement, stepped around to the passenger’s side and slid into the car. The bang of the door closing echoed in the night’s silence.

No protocol existed that said Melinda needed to get close to their clearly dead target. Not when the cleanup crew was already on its way and would take care of firearms or any questionable paraphernalia on the body. Melinda needed a moment to collect herself, though, and wanted to give Natasha the space to do the same before they drove back to the motel and had to report to Coulson.

He would understand. He’d been silent thus far, except for when directly addressed, and Melinda knew he understood the undercurrents of the situation without needing to be present. Coulson was profoundly good with people, and with dealing with personalities like hers and Natasha’s.

She also suspected he was trying to set them up, without officially sanctioning it because that would be against regulation, but that was neither here nor there.

She’d said she was going to check the body, though, so Melinda moved around it and crouched down in a spot where her shadow wouldn’t interfere with her view. She wrinkled her nose at the odours emitting from the body, and bent down and fetched Shostakov’s abandoned gun. Leave the brain matter and blood for the cleanup crews. 

“We’re done here. We’ll switch vehicles at the plaza,” she said, striding back to the car and hopping in. Romanoff, beside her, didn’t seem to be focused on much of anything.

“Will you tell me what’s in your head?” Melinda asked, almost pulling off of the driveway and into the wooded area beyond as she drove around the body to avoid disturbing the scene. Natasha didn’t reply, and Melinda didn’t push it further. She would try again when their every word wasn’t being recorded.

 

Coulson was in their room when they returned to the motel. He gave them each a once over and, with a silent motion of his head, gestured for them to clean up in the bathroom. Natasha, the blood on her face dried and staring to flake off, removed her earpiece and went first.

Melinda leaned back against the wall next to the door and watched Coulson do paperwork on her bed—the room wasn’t spacious. 

“She’s okay?” he asked after a minute, voice not quite a whisper.

Melinda raised an eyebrow. “She’s a professional, Phil. She’s fine.” 

He shook his head. “I don’t need to remind you of how personal this was for her.” He looked solemn, resigned, and the lines on his face—older than his years, Phil cared too much—seemed to sag and drag his features down along them, as though they were tracks.

He looked as though he didn’t expect Natasha to recover from this, but if that’s what he thought, he hadn’t sat down and had a real, personal conversation about Romanoff’s feelings toward her ex-husband.

“She’s resilient,” Melinda said. “I don’t think she’s as affected by this as you seem to think she is.” 

It hadn’t been that long since she’d escorted a scared, resigned Natasha Romanoff from the Raft to S.H.I.E.L.D. Hadn’t been that long since the woman had Anglicized her name, had started exhibiting all of the signals of someone who wanted to change herself. Of someone who was starting over. 

Natasha hadn’t only seen a threat to her personal safety in Shostakov. She had seen a threat to the security of the new future she was trying to build in America—a threat to her ability to develop new allegiances and to engender S.H.I.E.L.D.’s trust in her. Because it was hard enough to conceive of an organization placing trust in a spy who had defected once already—Shostakov coming into the picture could have sent Natasha back to the Raft, permanently. 

After all, it nearly had.

“Check on her, please,” Phil said. But it came too late, and even as Melinda rolled her eyes and went to turn to the bathroom, Natasha stepped out. In addition to cleaning up she’d changed from her field suit, and wore jeans and a t-shirt alongside the expression that said she knew they’d been talking about her, if not the content of the conversation. Coulson smiled at her and somehow it didn’t even look forced. 

“Are we debriefing here or back at S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Natasha asked as Melinda walked past to take her turn cleaning up. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, looking back at Coulson with her eyebrows raised.

“At S.H.I.E.L.D.,” he said. “HQ wants to make sure the scene is cleared up and the Red Guardian’s body is solidly in our custody before anything is declared closed.”

Natasha gave a tiny nod. Melinda glowered past her, at Coulson, and slammed the door to the bathroom.

Her reflection didn’t look any differently than Melinda was used to, though she’d been sure she would look more rundown. More tired. More _anything._ Romanoff’s fight wasn’t her fight, still wasn’t her fight, even though she’d been assigned to the mission. And now that the op was over, Melinda could put it behind her. Another job in her file. 

Natasha wouldn’t be able to put it behind her though, at least not right now and, affection behind what it was, that meant it was all weighing more heavily on Melinda than she would’ve liked. 

She splashed cold water on her face after washing the sweat and dirt from the mission off of it and patted it dry with the last clean towel. Then pulled her hair back in a ponytail and stepped back into the main room, still in her field suit since she’d forgotten to grab a change of clothes.

Coulson had left, and Natasha sat on one of the beds, talking quietly on her phone. 

“I have to go,” she said when Melinda stepped out, and snapped the phone shut on the heel of the words.

“Did Coulson say when we’d be headed back to New York?”

“Extraction is coming tomorrow morning,” Natasha said. “We’re low priority now that Alexei’s dead.”

Melinda hesitated. She _shouldn’t_ say anything and Natasha was going to go through enough mandated psychiatric sessions when they got back to base—she would probably be put on leave, at least for a short time—but sometimes, _sometimes_ , Melinda didn’t know how to leave well enough alone.

“You still call him Alexei,” she said. “You told me you don’t have feelings for him anymore, but you’re preserving your connection to him. Why?”

Natasha looked surprised by the question and went almost stock-still, her gaze distant as she thought about the answer. 

“I suppose I hadn’t noticed.”

That was a lie. 

“Why are you punishing yourself for daring to be better than you were?” Melinda asked, and took a chance and sat down on the end of Natasha’s bed. 

“I am not better, Agent May. I’ve merely changed hands. If I seem better it’s because they are better.” She didn’t sound upset about it, merely matter-of-fact.

“You’re allowed to have your own thoughts and passions, Natasha. You’re more than a tool.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t help me because they wanted to give me a better life.”

“No, S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t.”

Natasha’s lips went thin, a hint of real emotion breaking through her mask. “Clint Barton is an idiot.”

Melinda chose not to respond to that one, since that was her general impression of Barton but Romanoff, who Melinda suspected had been on the phone with Barton minutes before, didn’t mean it in the way that she would.

“Even so,” she said at length, and here she was banking everything on an assumption. She wasn’t supposed to take risks with her personal life, she did that enough in her professional life. “Now you can start rebuilding. Starting with cutting Shostakov’s given name from your vocabulary.”

For a moment Natasha stared at her with her blank mask back in place, and Melinda, who had been completely collected during the entire op, felt her stomach churn and heart rate spike. 

“It’s more worrying than reassuring that I think you’re right,” Natasha said, and she wasn’t meeting Melinda’s eyes, but at Melinda’s lips.

“Worrying from the thought of it or because of where the advice is coming from?” Melinda asked, injecting a droll tone into her voice.

Natasha looked briefly, and exaggeratedly, contemplative, her features scrunching and pupils rolling up to look through her lashes up at the ceiling. A flash of thought flitted through Melinda’s mind, like one of the butterflies from her stomach having gotten lose, that she’d never foreseen a path in her life that would lead her to flirting—honestly flirting, as Melinda May and Natasha Romanoff, people and not roles—with the Black Widow.

“The thought,” Natasha said, as though it were necessary, and her voice dropped. Planting one hand on the bed, she leaned toward Melinda. “You once offered to lend me your ear, to help me settle into S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she said. “Will you help me forget Alexei?” 

Natasha had moved closer, or at least one of them had, because their hands were almost touching. “Stop. Calling him. Alexei,” she instructed, matching Natasha’s low tone and not bothering to fight her desire to stare at the full, rosy lips that were so close now. 

A glint of challenge entered Natasha’s eye. “Make me forget his name,” she murmured, and that challenge transferred into her voice, syllables dripping from lips quirked up in a smirk.

Circumstances shoved to the back of her mind, potential consequences ignored, Melinda covered Natasha’s hand with hers. Her fingers a delicate pressure around Natasha’s wrist, holding her in place, and keeping Melinda’s balance all at once, she covered Natasha’s lips with her own.

Her lips were soft and full against Melinda’s, everything they’d been advertised to be, and white noise filled her senses, reducing her to their points of contact. Lips and hands pressed against each other and then Natasha’s hand on the back of her neck, tugging Melinda closer, holding them together. 

They parted quickly for air and readjusted, Melinda pushing Natasha back onto the pillows and pressing her body against the one below her. In her field suit, tight as it was and despite its thickness, she could feel every little indentation—the curve of Natasha’s breasts and hips, the button on her jeans—almost as well as if the suit were her skin. And when Natasha’s hands ran down her back, fingers scraping, she could feel where the scratches would be if Natasha’s fingers had clawed across skin.

Natasha tugged at Melinda’s hair, and the kiss broke off while she pulled the hair tie from Melinda’s ponytail, loosing hair around her shoulders and face. Natasha’s fingers ran back through her hair, pulling at it when they caught in small snags, and Melinda bit down on her lip at the sensation of the light scratching of nails on her scalp. 

Below her, Natasha’s smile was wicked. Melinda ran a hand down Natasha’s front, feeling the soft cotton of her t-shirt until she came to the hem, and lifting it to run her fingers lightly against the soft skin over Natasha’s right hip.

Hesitation entered Natasha’s features and Melinda pulled her hand back.

“What’s wrong?” 

“Coulson—“

Melinda rolled her eyes. “I promise we have his blessing,” she said, and there was a brief flash of disbelief, almost outrage, in Natasha’s eyes before she surged up and took Melinda’s lips with hers again, reservations apparently assuaged.

 

xxvi.

Could she curse Clint Barton, or Phil Coulson, for giving her the space and tools to take something for herself?

Possibly, she had to thank them.

Afterward, neither of them did anything like _cuddling_. She and Melinda— _Melinda_ : a name she could be comfortable using, the name that belonged to the person who was going to try and help her keep her past in the past—had slept separately, making use of both beds in the room both in case Coulson came in, so they didn’t impinge on his plausible deniability, and because neither of them was sure yet.

Sex didn’t mean anything. Not to people in their line of work, and not to people _like them_ anyway.

But there could be a future for them here. Natasha had a little burning beacon of hope in her heart; it sat warm and glowing like an ember. It was a completely unfamiliar feeling, and she didn’t quite know what she thought of it yet. Maybe she was scared, just a little, but happy, as well. Certainly happy.

“Debrief today. It’s going to finally be over,” Melinda said as they dressed and packed, each scouring the room separately to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind.

“There’s still the cell in Georgia,” Natasha reminded her. 

Melinda shrugged, making a bit of a face. “They’ll send someone else,” she said. “The Red Guardian needed operatives of our calibre. His support pocket won’t. Not if he thought he was good enough that he didn’t need to work near them.”

Natasha gave a tiny smile, because that wasn’t how the Red Room had worked and she doubted that was how Ale—Shostakov had been thinking, but Melinda could be right about how S.H.I.E.L.D. would handle things. She knew the agency much better than Natasha, had more experience with it.

“Wheels up in half an hour,” Coulson said when they walked out of the room. He looked them up and down and Natasha gave him a cool look in return. It wasn’t an expensive motel, and he’d had the room right next door.

Plausible deniability. They could’ve been watching TV.

Right.

“We’re ready, Sir,” Natasha said, walking to her car and dropping her bag in the back seat.

“May, with me. We leave the way we came.”

Natasha met Melinda’s eye roll and returned her nod as she got into the driver’s seat, pulling out while Coulson and May were still loading their car. Back at base she was going to have to fully face the aftermath of all of this but last night—whatever Coulson had done to negotiate their not returning immediately—had been a nice intermission between Act I and II of Natasha staring her past in the face.

She had been in trouble when S.H.I.E.L.D. had brought her in, had gotten past it, and landed herself in trouble of a different sort. 

She hoped—and dared to use the word—that it would be a more enjoyable one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooo it's done! I want to say it ended with a bang but that would be a pun.
> 
> So let's say it ended suddenly, and since I didn't realize it was going to end with this chapter until I got there, there's a good chance for one-shots in this world (but no actual sequel).
> 
> http://shieldivarius.tumblr.com

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Trouble](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2779826) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




End file.
